Please feel free to submit any others you think are cool in the comments below.

The List of Portfolio Themes for WordPress

My Resume (less like a portfolio, but still kinda cool)

Deep Focus – Elegant Themes WordPress Portfolio

Phazed

Creatic

FolioWay

MediaReel

Architectos

Perfekto

Minim

Yin & Yang

Awesome Portfolio Theme

Conclusion… too many to list… go here

After looking around at so many cool portfolio WordPress themes, I have to suggest you check out this site for a whole huge list of truly inexpensive possibilities for a new portfolio site.

Update: Here’s my Pinterest Board where I’m going to collect a bunch more portfolio themes.

This kind of thing didn’t surprise me, coming from Ted. He’s one of the most vigilant awesomeness advocates I know. But, one thing I realized during that conversation…. if he could get the stack of front-end engineers together with the purpose of producing awesome stuff, there would be almost nothing stopping them except for one thing. The same kryptonite which stops all great developers – marketing.

Competition, Collaboration, Complaining

Marketing is the bane of a developer’s existence. It’s the thing we ignore, but we need.

Marketing is similar to tourism. The locals hate tourists, yet they depend on them for their survival in the modern age. It’s a love/hate relationship. Development is no different. We need marketing, but we hate it too. It’s so fake. So contrived. So finicky. Why can’t the quality stuff just get to the top of the list and get popular simply because it’s awesome? It’s sad really.

But, it’s needed. And, there are plenty of people out there who love to market. They just don’t like developers.

Why do developers have to be so agitating, so controlling, so vigilant and annoying to work with? If marketers could just have an idea and get someone to build it without complaining, the world would be a much better place, right? I mean, marketers know the market. It’s what they do. They know what people want, so the developers should just listen to them.

Ah, conflict. Gotta love it.

So, here’s the point… I live in both worlds. I see both points. I understand both pains because I’ve been both. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to shine the spotlight on little projects that developers are creating which are awesome. On the other side, I’m going to highlight some marketers who are pushing some great stuff.

In doing so, I hope to make some connections, smooth out the rough edges, and bring two communities together. There’s nothing we can’t accomplish if we actually get along. My vision is to see developers with great ideas and great talent build awesome stuff, and have a great local marketer pick that up and make it huge. On the other side, I want to see marketers with amazing ideas get their stuff built by some crazy awesome developers. Everyone would benefit from this.

It should be noted that I skipped one major aspect of the community, and that is designers. I didn’t do that on purpose in this article, and I do recognize how different each skill is. I do think design is a major aspect of adoption, usability, etc. Thus designers play a critical role in the awesomeness quotient of a project as well. We’ll add designers to the batter when we get the first two ingredients playing nicely and that’s when the world will explode and finally realize that San Diego has some major powerhouses in all three specializations.

And without much ado, I would like to present to you a bunch of great WordPress photo gallery themes. Some cost money (usually the best ones), and some don’t. I’m not going to put the prices on here because I expect they’ll probably change over time. But, I highly recommend taking a close look at each of these photo gallery themes for WordPress. These are some of the best:

Modularity WordPress photo gallery theme

Download

Wordpress Photo Gallery Theme - Modularity

This theme is super-slick. It flaunts a simple layout but a whack of options behind the scenes. The theme options include the following:

• Built in full-screen HD video player
• Optional homepage slideshow
• Optional homepage Mac-style image slider gallery
• Optional homepage Magazine-style post layout
• Optional homepage blog-style layout
• A theme options page where you can define background, text, link colors, contact info, site tracking code and more
• A homepage settings page where you can choose which apps show up on your homepage layout
• SEO-optimised titles and alt tags
• Four widgetized areas
• Click-down navigation for a compact, minimalist masthead
• Built-in multimedia custom field support
• Automatic thumbnail generation. No need to manage thumbnails using custom fields

Aperture – A WooTheme Photo Gallery for WordPress Photographers

Download

Aperture - A WooTheme Photo Gallery Theme for WordPress

This is a great theme by WooThemes, who does some amazing stuff. I’ve actually purchased themes from WooThemes and been very impressed with the quality, so I expect if you’re a photographer looking for some kind of WordPress gallery, you should find a good set of options there.

BlackCanvas – A StudioPress Photographer’s WordPress Theme

Download

BlackCanvas - WordPress for Photographers

StudioPress themes come with the following features:

• Widget-Ready
• Theme Options Page
• Ready for Advertising
• Comment Functionality
• Developed for Localization
• PSD Files Included
• Lifetime Support
• WordPress & Theme Tutorials
• Approved Designers

I’ll stop here for today, but if you like this kind of post, please say so in the comments and I’ll be happy to keep giving some great themes (whether it’s for WordPress photo galleries or perhaps other WordPress genres of themes). You name it.

Please listen for a second.  I’ll try to keep this short, but if you don’t want to read anymore, please do me this one favor.

Click this link, register, and vote for our team and our idea:
http://ideablob.com/ideas/3344-Disaster-Emergency-Info-Now-

Now, for those of you who are a little hesitant, here’s why I want you to click, register and vote.

See, I’ve been a little busy these last few years down here in San Diego.  Of course, I’ve always been busy, but this is different.  A few years ago I started searching for something more than money.  I’ve always been committed to my faith, but I’ve also been a pretty decent business-minded guy too.  Even now I consult other small businesses and non-profits on revenue strategies.  I know how to do that pretty well.

There’s something else I’ve been looking for.  I’ve been looking for a team and an opportunity.  A group of leaders who are self-sacrificing, looking for the betterment of others and willing to do what it takes to give a pure gift.

In 2003, San Diego went through some pretty ferocious fires.  I heard about them and watched a little on CNN while I was at Western in Bellingham.  But, I didn’t pay much attention, as most of didn’t who weren’t in the middle of the crisis.

But, then there were the floods in Centralia and Chehalis two different years that destroyed homes, businesses, and livelihoods.  Now those, we paid attention to.  We were in the middle of them. We had 18 inches in our home and it ruined everything.

Then there was Katrina, Hurricane Ike, the California Firestorm of 2007.  It’s in everyone’s back yard now.  It’s everyone’s problem at some point.

Here’s the problem we’re living with today.

The same problems exist today that have existed for a hundred years.  We still aren’t able to communicate to the people we need to most in times of emergency.

When the phone lines are down, how do you call 911?  When the internet is down, how do you find a map out of your area or the next shelter?  When the radio stations and tv stations are retelling the same stories every 20 minutes, but not talking about your area and whether the fire is over that hill behind your house, how do you find out?

That’s the problem.

But now we’re living in a world of opportunity.

The world is crazy and always has been.  But what’s changed in the last few years is the maturing of one of the worlds I’ve been living and working in for the past 15.  The internet has become a big and awesome place.  We’re now all publishing massive amounts of things.  Text, videos, audio, location-aware devices like GPS is able to all be published.  Real-time.  Like our own TV broadcasts but more than just TV.  It’s all possible today. Not only possible, but actually happening.  And by more than just internet geeks like me.

Some people find all that scary.  Those people are right about the possible threats of publishing so much info about ourselves.  But there’s also a whole world of possibility that we haven’t tapped yet.

So here’s the point.  With all this information being published by people in real-time, we have a chance to fix the problem.  We have the opportunity to make sure the officials and groups who can help us in times of disasters have all the information possible.  Every bit of it.

We need them to know when we’re out of water, food, shelter.  We need them to know when fires cross the roads.

That’s why the team I mentioned earlier exists.

Together, we’re creating the world’s first service which will take all the things that we are publishing and turn it into something useful.

We’re already talking to official public information officers in San Diego and Houston, government officials, traditional media outlets, publicly funded media outlets, citizen journalists and so many more stakeholders.  But this isn’t a company. It’s a project.  This project should have existed years ago, but it doesn’t.

Soon it will.

We’re building it.  For free.

I believe in this team.  I believe they’ve sacrificed time, effort, and skills to help save their fellow neighbors during an emergency.  This is a noble cause.  They deserve this.

Please, go to this link.  Register.  Vote for our cause.  We’re in the running right now for a $10,000 prize which will be split between 15 people.  It’s worth about 1/100th of the amount of time they’re putting into it. It’s a drop in the bucket to them, but it would mean so much to validate their work.

http://ideablob.com/ideas/3344-Disaster-Emergency-Info-Now-

Please, take the time for us.  I would really appreciate it.

And feel free to encourage your friends and family as well to do the same if you feel led.

Sincerely,

Nate Ritter

The image above, which looks like a broken Death Star, is actually a visual representation of my Social Graph (at least on Facebook).

Rather than explain what a Social Graph is, I’ll just tell you this. First, there’s a new kind of geek in the world now. I’ll call them the Social Geeks™. These are the people who are dubbed “social media gurus“. Second, the Social Geeks® have come up with a fancy sounding term (so they/we can charge more per hour) called a “Social Graph”. You know it as your “friends”.

Now, if I can stop using quotations for a minute, the real point of the Social Graph isn’t for the generic person who uses the internet. It’s an analytical tool so that those Social Geeks∞ can sell their souls to the devil (a.k.a. marketing departments), telling them how to get in touch with your friends so that you can be sold that 4th burrito you really shouldn’t have eaten at lunch (and then the 24 hour fitness membership you’ll use for 2 weeks).

Ok, it’s not all bad. Plenty of academics use Social Graphs to determine behavior, affinity, and other academic stuff. And, as we all know, 99% of what academics study don’t cross over into the business world where it becomes applicable to the generic public.

All that to say….

Pretty cool picture huh?

One of my favorite authors, Seth Godin, recently touched upon the subject of signal to noise in social media and the web in general. It’s interesting to me that his perspective comes at such a fortuitous time as this. Literally, the day a few of us will be getting together to discuss the very issue.

Signal to noise ratio. It’s the term used by radio operators to describe the amount of quality sounds they’re able to hear over the static. Blogs and Twitter are perfect examples of this. There are zillions of blogs out there now, and thousands more being created every day. Are any of them valuable? Twitter asks “what are you doing” and I have to admit I put much more than what I’m doing into that little box. In fact, Lisa Brewster and David Horn have dubbed the problem infamously “Nate limiting” (as opposed to “rate limiting”). As honored as I am to be a part of the meme, I also want to find a solution to the issue.

There’s quite a few people now talking about this issue. What we need now is not aggregation. That just puts all the noise in one place. Although, aggregation might be a necessary step to see that it doesn’t work first.

We’ve gone from a top-down approach to publishing content into the era of “user” contributed content (don’t get me started on the word “user”). Now we can publish anytime, anywhere, on almost any consumable media.

So, what happens next? AllTop, Guy Kawasaki’s creation.

AllTop cracks me up, actually. If you don’t remember the original Yahoo!, you probably don’t understand why. Yahoo! started out by being a directory of organized interesting and relevant (“top”?) websites. Then Google came along and kicked their ass because we wanted more content than just a directory. Now we’ve got too much content and we just want the “best”. See the pendulum swinging again? It’ll go back and forth like this until someone solves the issue with a filter of some sort.

Enter “Nate limiting” and the content, priority, and “friend” filter. There will be a solution, it just might take some work on the human’s part to tweak it right.

The only thing that’s come close so far has been Facebook’s feed preferences (screenshot below).

We need more than a closed filter though. What do you think the solution is? Would the general population even use a solution like this?

As you can see, we have a new WordPress theme for my blog. It was designed by the449, and they did a pretty good job. I asked for simplicity and a better focus on conversation and community. With what is currently available with this system, they delivered a great product.

With every new custom theme, there’s always a few bugs. We’re working through them as we go which is just a testament to the449′s support.

But, with this theme there’s also new opportunities. I specifically wanted a few places left open for sponsorships. Those two spaces are above the fold in 125×125 spots. If you’re interested, contact me and let’s talk about a deal.

As we all know, I dislike advertisements, so I’m working on a deal with the folks from hashtags.org. I love their service, but I hate the massive ads they placed up on the site. I talked with one of them about that and suggested they remove them or make them a little less annoying. Instead, we may be working out a trade where they’ll take my suggestion and drop the ad. They’re considering removing the ads simply because I’ve offered a trade. I will give them a sponsorship slot on this blog. The trade is much more in their favor as I get a ton more traffic than they do right now, but it’s worth it.

What do I get out of it? A few things.

First, I get to see, use, and promote an awesome service. I love doing that, and if missing out on a few bucks for the ad spot on my blog means they get to have a better product, I’m all for it. I’ll take the hit to make it better for you (hmm… reminds me of that health care article I wrote recently).

Second, when they take down the big ad on the top of the screen, I’ll create a graphic which will be placed in a bit more conspicuous location and point back here. The point is simply to get a little credit for helping to clean up their product. I don’t have anything to sell the people who would visit hashtags.org, so the value is in the attention and influence.

So, I think that’s a pretty good deal. What do you think?

Lately, I’ve had a few people ask questions about how to create their own websites. What I’ve been recommending if you’re on the cheap is to look at some of the great open source web design template sites. These websites are awesome, and I’ve used them many times in the past, and will continue to use them in the future as long as they produce good designs and readable/editable code.

If you want to create a website and your budget is non-existent, check these websites first:

1. http://oswd.org
2. http://openwebdesign.org
3. http://opendesigns.org

If you have a small budget (in the $50-100 range), and you’d like something more flashy than that, you could check out these great template designs as well, which has some great template web designs in it too, albeit a bit more complicated than the list provided above.

Also, if you know about more sites like these, please tell us about the site in the comments section. I’d love to compile all these types of places and repost with a much bigger list.

[tags]oswd, web design, templates, design, budget, free, cheap[/tags]

I’ve been playing with every feature on the iPhone that I can, using it as much as possible in my daily life and showing it off to other people. Doing so has shown me a few bugs in the system they have to work out.

Here’s what I have. Feel free to add to this list of iPhone bugs and crashes if you have any others you’d like to note:

• Safari crashes (closes, no errors, goes back to home screen) when you hit a page that has a javascript error on it. Case in point is when you try to add a comment to an invitation to an event on Pownce.
• Google Maps crashes (closes, no errors, goes back to home screen) when the lag on the EDGE network is too great for it to handle. Try pinching in and out and then switching from map to satellite and vice versa. Eventually, if the tiles don’t update quick enough, something throws an error and it crashes.
• Downloading an image (.jpg) in Mail freezes the entire phone. Yup, this one just happened a few minutes ago. To power down, I guessed correctly with a combo of buttons – namely the sleep button (on the top) and the home screen button, holding them both for about 5 seconds turns the iPhone off.
• Can’t view all of the YouTube videos (yet). I’m assuming this isn’t a bug, as I’ve heard a rumor that YouTube is converting every one of their videos to H.264, which is awesome. The problem is that I can’t watch much of anything my friends send me on my iPhone, even though the YouTube application is installed, unless it happens to be the 1% of the videos that fit in the categories of Most Recent or Most Watched. That just sucks, even if it’s not a bug. Hurry! I want my YouTube!
• Can’t update Facebook status. Now this one is more just annoying than anything. Facebook, fix your crap.
• Can’t set a “home page” on Safari. Again, just a minor annoyance, but I’ll get used to it not being there. At least let me set it to not load anything (blank page) if I want.
• Flash not being on Safari is a huge thing on my wish-list.

What bugs and crashes have you experienced so far? What website functionality doesn’t work for you that you wish did?

[tags]iphone, safari, mail, youtube, email, crashes, bugs, problems, google, map, javascript[/tags]

What’s on it right now?

Ta da!

The Amazon.com Affiliate TinyURL Link Creator

You know, the one I created for Jed a few weeks ago. It runs a search on Amazon for anything you want and returns a TinyURL. Better than that, you can enter your Amazon.com Affiliate ID and it will include that in the TinyURL. Mmmm, goodness. Read more…

The Gargantuan List of California Contractors

What do you do when someone pays you to gather up the contact info, license and bonding information, and other interesting things about all 625,000 270,000 active construction contractors in the state of California? You sell it. Feel free to make me an offer. Read more…

All this and more is located on the new Products page here.

[tags]amazon, affiliate, tinyurl, california, contractors, construction[/tags]