Tim Owens - Throw Out The Manual (Page 6)

Tim Owens

Opening #TWP15

I'll be diving in and out of the open course on Teaching With WordPress and wanted to get the obligatory "Hi this is me" post out of the way. I'm actually excited to see a structured course develop on helping folks think about using WordPress for teaching and learning because

Building Slack Integrations for Reclaim Hosting

For that past few months I've been dipping my toes in and out of the water of a Slack account I setup for Reclaim Hosting. When I went full-time back in January it seemed like perhaps a better way for Jim and I to stay in touch about what we

Developing Better Canvas Integrations with WordPress

Developing Better Canvas Integrations with WordPress

I've written previously about an innovation grant I was involved with awarded by Instructure to develop an open source plugin that bridges Canvas to WordPress. There are various LTI integrations for WordPress available that are supposed to do a small piece of this and, for lack of mincing words here,

Getting Started with Multisite - Part 3: Configuration and Comparison

Part 1: Why Multisite? Part 2: Activation Part 3: Configuration and Comparison If you've been following along with this series of tutorials we've talked a bit about the how and the why of Multisite. At this point it probably makes sense to look at what it means to configuring some

Getting Started with Multisite - Part 2: Activation

Part 1: Why Multisite? Part 2: Activation Part 3: Configuration and Comparison In this next section I'm going to talk about how you actually activate the Multisite feature. It's not something that's exposed within the WordPress dashboard, but it's also not as hard to activate as you might think. But

Getting Started with Multisite - Part 1: Why Multisite?

Part 1: Why Multisite? Part 2: Activation Part 3: Configuration and Comparison I was recently helping someone get their site moved from WordPress.com to a standalone WordPress install on Reclaim Hosting and one of the concerns was that she actually has multiple blogs and wanted a way to manage

Pixar's Emotion

Pixar's Emotion

Michael Branson Smith is in town for a few days to inspire students in the wonder of the animated GIF as well as an installation in the UMW Console Living Room exhibit to rebroadcast period television over VHF airwaves using a Raspberry Pi and transmitter. While hanging out with him

"Your then was not my then..." - Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, Chapter One

"Your then was not my then..." - Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, Chapter One

I began reading Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis by Robert Putnam this past week at the prompting of an informal study group by Bryan Alexander. Part of where my interest lies is selfishly in wanting to escape to books and read more (and at a higher level than

I turned off Notifications, and I'm not turning them back on.

I turned off Notifications, and I'm not turning them back on.

My wife teaches Kindergarten and is on Spring Break this week. Typically we've never done anything special because my vacation days never aligned with hers or we didn't have the money or didn't plan enough in advance or whatever. This time around with me working for myself and us having

Bridging Canvas to the Open Web

canvas Featured

Bridging Canvas to the Open Web

As I finalized my preparations to leave UMW last Fall I outlined some specific projects that I would be willing to oversee as part of a transitionary role as DTLT hires for my position. Things like server management for UMW Domains and UMW Blogs as well as some development for

DesignAssignments

When you think of love

It's been ages since I browsed through the DS106 Assignment Bank and I was feeling the urge to do something semi-creative as a bit of an escape this evening. I chose the [Lyric Typography Poster](http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/lyric-typography-poster/) assignment and found a set of lyrics I liked

Fighting Isolation

Fighting Isolation

I expected when I went full-time with Reclaim Hosting that the first thing I'd miss is the bullpen. I imagine it's a feeling that others who freelance or otherwise work solely for themselves experience and more and more I'm interested in learning ways that they deal with it. For myself

NPM, Bower, and Grunt. Oh My!

NPM, Bower, and Grunt. Oh My!

If you're following along from my last post on Homebrew you should have Homebrew installed and have used it to install Node.JS on your computer. I'll be honest, when I first heard of software projects that were using Node.JS like Ghost (the blogging platform that I use here)

Brewing a Local Development Environment

Brewing a Local Development Environment

The final weekend after the holiday break is always bittersweet. Having worked for a public school as a state employee for the last 6 years I can definitely say one of the greatest perks is the generous leave around the holidays. That being said while I've enjoyed the time off,

Making the Web We Want

Making the Web We Want

I've been thinking a lot about Reclaim Hosting recently and how the Domain of One's Own ethos connects to a broader cultural movement of ownership and personalization. I've been a vocal supporter of a similar "Maker Movement" that has risen up in recent years in education as a result of

Taking the Next Step

Taking the Next Step

I can rather clearly remember conversations with Jim Groom in the interview and the weeks leading up to it where I'd ask about what my job as an instructional technology specialist would entail. Officially I'd be working with faculty to integrate emergent technology into their course design. That alone would

Learning to Listen

Learning to Listen

Before you read anything that I might say, I'd like you to go read a wonderful post by my colleague and friend Ryan Brazell. http://ryanbrazell.net/sit-down-shut-up-and-listen-this-is-whats-wrong-with-edtech/ Wednesday was a very difficult day for a lot of people, many of which are not able to speak publicly about this

Streaming and Recording in the Classroom

Streaming and Recording in the Classroom

Whenever I hear the words "lecture capture" I immediately think of stale videos of someone talking in front of a chalkboard, picture-in-picture with a Powerpoint, about some mundane topic. It's just a term loaded with connotations that reflect negatively on the possibilities of the technology that could be used in

Bring Your Project to Life with Knight Lab's Publishing Tools

Bring Your Project to Life with Knight Lab's Publishing Tools

It doesn't seem like the distant past in which the idea of building interactive content for the web seemed like a much larger feat to accomplish. Publishing content has long been a dead simple process of firing up a blog and writing. But the idea of interactive maps and timelines

UMW Blogs in the Cloud

UMW Blogs in the Cloud

Anyone tasked with running a large WordPress Multisite install at an institutional level has likely dealt with their fair share of issues in the past few years from database scaling with large growth to the constant barrage of spam and login attempts that can DDOS and server and bring it

Customizing WHMCS: Automatic Logins

In the past few months I've started dig in quite a bit with WHMCS, the billing platform that we use on Reclaim Hosting. Out of the box WHMCS does a lot of stuff really well. You can setup hosting plans, connect with domain registrars and cPanel servers, and accept payments

Reflecting on the Reason

Reflecting on the Reason

I had a quick interaction this weekend that left a pretty big impact on me. A student who had a Reclaim Hosting account that was up for renewal wanted to know how to migrate his stuff and I was walking him through the process. Ultimately he decided to just stay

Digital Housekeeping

Digital Housekeeping

I've been doing a bit of housekeeping to my personal digital identity the past few days. It's a slow process to figure out what I need, what I don't, where it all should live, etc. When I think of my own domain I'm reminded of the saying about the cobbler's

Incubating a New Space for Experimentation

Incubating a New Space for Experimentation

I half-thought about apologizing for the lack of blog posts in the last, oh, 8 months. But then I figured "screw it, just start writing again" so here we are. Easiest way to catch up is to go in reverse until I can't remember where I was and then start