Read the thoughts and musings of a cultured redneck here
Once you choose a font you can click to the “Type Tester” section to see how any specific words you type will look in your selected font. You can easily increase or decrease the font with the slider and you can also view how the font looks in various browsers on the “Browser Samples” tab as shown in the screenshot below.
Typekit uses “kits” to organize fonts for usage by designers. It’s really easy to create a new kit. Simply hover the kit section and click “Add New Kit”. As you can see from the screenshot below, I've created a kit for each site on which I use custom fonts. You can see how to add a new kit in the below screenshot.
Now that the "kit" is ready I need to add some fonts to it. Once you decide on a font you simply hover over the font and click “Add to Kit” and the font will be added to the kit for which you are currently viewing as denoted in the below image.
After you add a font to a kit you can go into the "kit editor" to further customize. Once you’re inside the kit editor you can customize various settings and styles that make the custom fonts appear on your site. You can simply add the CSS selectors that you’re using on your site & they will then render showing the custom font that you've just selected in Typekit. Notice in the below screenshot where I'm adding " .ANewSelector " class in Typekit's editor.
Now at this point you’re probably wondering what is linking your site & Typekit together so that the selectors know which font face to use. In the kit editor Typekit gives you 2 lines of JavaScript that you need to include in order to make things work. Just copy and paste that script (shown in the below screenshot) into your code and you’ll be ready to rock.
If you wanted to access specific weights & styles via your skin.css file you can click on the “Using weights & fonts in your CSS” option which will give you the below screen allowing you to copy the CSS necessary for your specific font & weight.
Now if you did click the “Copy CSS” option you would end up with some CSS that resembled the below:
font-family: "atrament-web",sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400;
Once you click publish you will be ready to go. I should also mention that if you want to develop or test out styles locally you can also enter “localhost” in your kit editor settings and that will make your local sites work with the new custom fonts.
If you were concerned about how your styles would display on mobile devices you can click into the "Mobile Settings" section of the Typekit editor as seen in the below screenshot.
Now to make all of this active we need to click the big green “Publish” button at the bottom right hand corner of the kit editor screen which you can see in the below screenshot.
At this point we’ve successfully chosen our fonts and published them linking the custom fonts to our site. Now we just need to reference them in our skin's .ascx file, the skin.css or specific modules. In my skin’s .ascx file I’ve added the 2 lines of JavaScript to reference TypeKit.
Then in my HTML Module I simply referenced the CSS classes that I specified earlier in the Typekit selectors area.
And that's all it takes to get everything lined up. You can see an example of the redesigned home page (running locally) using the custom font “Atrament web” that I selected earlier.
Typekit makes it extremely easy to use custom fonts in your site. If you’re a Creative Cloud member you should check it out. I hope this blog has been helpful to you with integrating custom fonts in your DotNetNuke sites.
Regards,
Clint
Recently Punkie Haigler contacted me about the Central Eagle Baseball Alumni Association. He showed me the article he ran in the Pageland Progressive that is posted below:
For nearly two decades now, Coach Mitch Leaird and his staff have carried on the winning tradition of Central High Baseball. This proud program that was started by Coach Joey Mangum in 1977, has won its share of Region Championships, District Championships, and given many players the opportunity to play at the next level. During these tough economic times, Coach Leaird has had to operate on a limited budget. As former players, we can help make sure our beloved program has the resources it needs to continue the winning tradition. We are asking you to join the Eagle Baseball Alumni Association for a yearly donation of $20. The money raised through this club will be used exclusively for the baseball program. On Friday, April 12th, at 6:00 pm, we will celebrate Alumni Night at the home baseball game against Indian Land. We hope all former players will join us on this night to present Coach Leaird with our fundraising check and enjoy a night of great baseball and seeing old teammates and friends. Players who have joined the Alumni Association will be admitted free. Please help us help our baseball program. Join Today! Punkie Haigler [email protected] (843)672-4317
For nearly two decades now, Coach Mitch Leaird and his staff have carried on the winning tradition of Central High Baseball. This proud program that was started by Coach Joey Mangum in 1977, has won its share of Region Championships, District Championships, and given many players the opportunity to play at the next level.
During these tough economic times, Coach Leaird has had to operate on a limited budget. As former players, we can help make sure our beloved program has the resources it needs to continue the winning tradition. We are asking you to join the Eagle Baseball Alumni Association for a yearly donation of $20. The money raised through this club will be used exclusively for the baseball program.
On Friday, April 12th, at 6:00 pm, we will celebrate Alumni Night at the home baseball game against Indian Land. We hope all former players will join us on this night to present Coach Leaird with our fundraising check and enjoy a night of great baseball and seeing old teammates and friends. Players who have joined the Alumni Association will be admitted free.
Please help us help our baseball program. Join Today!
Punkie Haigler [email protected] (843)672-4317
My first questions to Punkie was, can we give online, and then it dawned on me that there was another reason Punkie was contacting me. So after a few weeks of working out some technical items here online we’ve finally made it possible for anyone to give online to the Eagle Baseball Alumni Association. You can click the button here in the blog to donate. Though, as I post more blogs over time this blog will pushed lower on the page and therefore I’m going to leave the button on the home page of my site as well so that it’s easily findable.
Although the yearly donation is slated at $20 if you feel compelled to give more I’m sure Mitch, Marty, and the other coaches and players would greatly appreciate it. If you have any comments, suggestions, or want more info, please contact Punkie at the contact info he mentioned above.
Also, I wish I could make the Alumni Association game, but we're hosting a large web conference in Charlotte that weekend. So ya'll have a good one and I hope to be there next year.
If you ever need to put some custom styles in the Telerik Rad Editor of DotNetNuke HTML module it can be a little frustrating if you don't know exactly where to put the files. It's actually a simple process. I cut a quick video walking through this process and wanted to post here in hopes of helping someone who may encounter this same issue.
I’d seen the job posting for the Sales Engineer role at DotNetNuke Corp for a while and thought that it seemed to be right up my alley. That is, until I got down to the part about the position being based out of San Mateo, California. I’m a Carolina boy through and through and don’t think I could survive without sweet tea! Not to mention that there’s no way the wife would move and I don’t believe you can hunt deer or catfish out there so it was a moot point to even think about it. I usually see Will Strohl tweet about the position, read the description, sigh, and then close the browser.
Then a strange thing happened… it seemed there was an opportunity to work remote if I’d be willing to travel some. You can imagine when I learned about this that I got pretty pumped up about it and consequently assured the wife that she should be pumped about it too ;-) After fixing my hair up, a trip to DNN HQ, and a few weeks later I’m now happy to announce that I've accepted a job at DNNCorp as a Sales Engineer! Along with my role as Sales Engineer I’ll also be doing some community evangelism.
After accepting the role I thought about my journey thus far with DotNetNuke and I would be doing an injustice if I didn’t thank several people and the DotNetNuke Community in general. If you care enough to read this post then you’re probably someone I should say thank you to… so thanks!
I've learned a lot about DNN over the past few years and much of my learning has stemmed from interactions with people online whether it’s on Twitter, a helpful blog entry that someone posted, or working through an issue on the forums or community exchange. In short I don’t think I’d have learned as much without the help, support, and encouragement from everyone in the DNN Community.
I’d specifically like to say thanks to a few individuals starting with Allen Foster. Allen has helped me out greatly along my way. Allen took me under his wing and continues to help me learn and grow. If Allen had never decided to revive the Charlotte based DotNetNuke user group then I’d never have been able to nag and mooch knowledge off people in the Carolinas and I probably wouldn't be writing this post. Will Strohl has always been a supportive, open ear willing to help me out as well as Will Morgenweck, Chris Paterra, and Chris Hammond have all gone out of their ways for me at some point. William Severance answered several of my forum posts way back when I was first trying to first figure things out which helped me to understand that there are people out there who want to help. This was my first glimpse into open source and the community behind DotNetNuke. Mitchel Sellers, Robb Bryn, Henry Kenuam, and Ryan Moore have all helped me out along the way too. I should also mention Armand Datema... Armand has helped me out by showing me the way with some really cool front-end stuff whether it be with JQuery, Form & List, or the DDR menu. I know that a great deal of my learning around DotNetNuke has only been possible through the relationships and graciousness of everyone in the community… so thank you!
I’m excited to be a part of the DotNetNuke team and hope to make a positive impact. Just when you thought I couldn’t tweet about DotNetNuke any more they go and offer me a job ;-)
Our crew had a blast last year at DNNWorld 2011 so we eagerly looked forward to this year’s conference all year long. This year DNNWord was moved up a month from November to October which was a welcomed change by me as November is the best part of deer hunting season in South Carolina. As soon as the early-bird registration came out I registered.
To me, DNNWorld is like a combination of a family reunion, a pep rally, and information-loaded-boot-camp. It’s really hard to describe and put into words, you just have to experience it. There are great people to meet, prizes to win, awesome sessions to inspire you and get your creativity flowing, a side-conversation constantly going on via social media, competitions to enter, arrows to shoot at people, good times to be had, and trees to be climbed. It’s fun and I always leave energized about the future. There was no way we’d miss it.
Form & List + ManDeeps Module Mashup
I had to create a portfolio and handle various formats so I tied the form and list module together with the LiveContent module from ManDeeps.com and used them to create the gallery. Technically I could have done this all with ManDeeps LiveContent module, but tying it in with the Form and List module makes it a little bit easier to maintain for content managers as well as gives me sorting, paging, and stronger control via CSS.
As a web developer and a hunter I find myself taking on two contrasting identities and, often times, bouncing back and forth between the two. When I?m with my co-workers I?m the ?web guy? with a country accent and when I?m with my hunting buddies I?m ?the guy who spends too much time up in city working on computers?(which is not really workin)?! You may be just like me, the guy who makes the commute to work in the city and returns back south chasing deer, turkeys, and anything that will bite a hook on the weekends. If you are, then you'll be able to empathize with my sentiments that follow. Accordingly, no matter on which end I find myself, I end up receiving a hard time from both my fellow hunters and co-workers. Though, I?ve come to appreciate both sides (and the hard time that they give me).
To help me illustrate what I?m describing a little, let me tell you a story about one of my friends from the city. I frequently find myself talking people from Charlotte into coming down to Pageland and ?letting their hair down?. (My dad says I ought to work on the Pageland Chamber of Commerce). I have a friend who is a New Yorker that now lives in Charlotte and I talked him into coming down to the country for a day. I took him fishing and we spent a few hours on the pond and really didn?t catch much. Towards the end of the trip I asked him what he thought about fishing. His response kind of caught me off guard. I expected him to be critical of my guiding abilities and to talk smack to me. Instead he replied saying that he really enjoyed fishing. I thought he was being sarcastic and I asked him why and he responded ?Do you hear the birds? and I said ?yes?. Then he noted to me that he never hears the birds where he lives in the city. He went on saying how he didn?t know of any pond that he could go fishing in that was close to Charlotte. He commented on how he really enjoyed the peacefulness of just floating on a pond simply because it wasn?t something he gets to do often and that it was relaxing to him.
Earlier that same day I had taken him out to a shooting range and it was his first time shooting a rifle, shotgun, and pistol. He actually hit the bull?s-eye on his first shot with the rifle, but it did bloody up his brow a little. He was even able to hit some skeet as well. He did go home with a nasty bruise on his shoulder too. Thinking he would talk junk to me about his shooting experience, I asked him how he felt about shooting and he responded that he really enjoyed it as well. He spoke of shooting the rifle and the immense moment of silence right before he pulled the trigger. He talked about the power and intensity that is packed into those few seconds of silence and yet how he didn?t even hear the gun go off. Yes, he learned and had a new appreciation. He thanked me for bringing him to shoot and for allowing him to get a new perspective on guns. He even took the target with the hole in the bulls-eye back to his house to show off!
From my friends responses it appeared that the moments he experienced "out of his element" were invaluable to him and helped him gain perspective. I believe this is the case because lessons learned when you find yourself seemingly out of your element and somewhat vulnerable offer the most room to grow. The things that hunters find commonplace were new learning experiences and good memories for my friend. He was open to coming down and, as any country boy would do, we tried to get him ?countrified? as much as possible... and it was fine by him. His normal identity is that of a city boy (who at first holds a gun on his shoulder as if it were a surface to air missile launcher). By coming down and living the life of a country boy for a day, he learned and benefitted from real-world experiences that derived knowledge that you can?t get from a book.
My friend found himself in the middle of a day that was outside of his normal environment. As I thought about his experience and how he was so grateful and appreciative, I reflected on my own life and realized that my ?normal? is being caught in between these two environments. Going back and forth between the identities is my "normal" and I?ve learned to appreciate it. I like to, how do they say, ?get in where I fit in? and that?s about all anyone can do. Though, to ?fit-in? in the contrasting environments takes a little vulnerability and openness with the end goal being to learn about the other side and yes, to learn about one?s self.
Not surprisingly, one?s identity is directly linked to what they do and the activities in which they are engaged. I'm engaged in more than one activity which leaves me actualizing multiple identitities. Though, it is only from the perspective of the fragmented identity (i.e. living the experiences of both worlds) that I am able to draw a true appreciation and understanding for both sides. Because I?m not always in the city, I appreciate certain aspects of a city life such as being able to go somewhere where nobody knows me, or the ability to get to almost any type of store relatively quickly, or being able to work with an organization that has a large scale web site who can offer me employment. On the flip side, because I?m not always in the country, I appreciate going to a restaurant and knowing the locals, or the winding country roads that are free of major traffic jams, being able to get out in the woods and work with my hands...and, as my friend said, to hear nature around me. The fragmented identity sharply brings into focus the advantages and disadvantages of both sides, allows me to see if and when the two converge, and in doing so brings on diversity and broader horizons. Had I never spent a good deal of time in the city, I wouldn't appreciate the country...and vice versa.
It's not too bad being a ?webneck?.
This past week we had another Queen City DotNetNuke User Group meeting. This meeting was unique in the fact that we had been promoting hard because DNNCorp flew one of their engineers out to speak to our group. Will Strohl arrived to Charlotte late last Wednesday evening. I gave Will a late night mini-tour of Charlotte and we talked as we rode around. Our meetings happen every 3rd Thursday so it wasn’t long before the next day came and it was meeting time.
At some point either Wednesday night or Thursday during the day I told Will that I thought we should open the meeting up and try a Google+ Hangout to see if any DotNetNuke developers in other areas would like to jump on to watch the presentations. Will was open to it and so I made a point to bring my laptop. When we got to Microsoft (our group meets at Microsoft Charlotte) we began setting everything up. We weren’t really sure how the video or audio quality would be, but we wanted to give it a shot. I put my computer off to the side of the table (near an outlet) on the front row. I turned the Google+ Hangout on and posted a link to it on Twitter. Within minutes I had my first taker. Gifford Watkins, a DotNetNuke phenom from Nova Scotia, jumped on to see what the fuss was all about. Shortly thereafter we had one more, then another, then another and before long we had a crew on a Google+ Hangout at least 20 minutes before the meeting began.
One of the first things I did was to give the guys a walk-around tour of the meeting. I got my laptop in my hands and showed them the room and the spread of food that we had at the meeting. I showed them the server rack near the door and randomly videoed people and talked with them as I walked around. It was kind of like a live virtual tour of the meeting. I did this to try to give the hangout attendees as much of a view of what was going on as possible.
The guys online were saying that they could hear me well and see the video clearly so it seemed like it was working out well. I told them we would do the best we could to make them feel like they were attending the meeting with us. To achieve that we also had one of our guys join the hangout. Will turned his laptop and joined the hangout and he interacted with the attendees via the chat window. One issue we had to overcome was when someone at the meeting would ask a question from the back of the room. Obviously the guys online couldn’t hear the question so Will would type it out to them in the chat window. He also typed some lines of code that one of the presenters used in his slide deck to make sure the guys could clearly read it. During the Hangout one of the guys typed that being a part of the Hangout was better than being at the actual meeting because they got to see the presentation plus they didn’t get in trouble for “passing notes”. His statement referred to the fact that the hangout attendees could read and write message to each other in the chat window. Will also typed to the hangout attendees and asked them if they had any questions for the speaker and sometimes they did so we were able to ask the speaker questions from hangout attendees as well! Remote Q&A with the speaker. Cool stuff!
In this picture you can see our speaker, Will Strohl, interacting with members of the Google+ Hangout
One note that is worth mentioning is that to make this happen the hangout attendees needed to turn their microphones down. I could see where some of the attendees were muting each other because they were getting feedback or their sound would steal the “stage” of the live speaker momentarily because that’s how Google+ Hangouts are configured. We just had to ensure that our speaker was the “live speaker” in the hangout and muting the microphones did this.
I will add one unique note as well. We had one DNN guy who wanted to attend the meeting. Robb Bryn was attending a meeting in the afternoon and was heading to Charlotte after his meeting. His meeting went over by a couple of hours so he was unable to make it. Though, when he found out about us opening it up to a Google+ Hangout he was able to join the hangout from his phone while driving down the road. I could literally see him in his truck riding down the road with trees passing him in the background of his driver’s side window. Eventually Robb finally pulled over on the side of the road and watched the whole meeting from his vehicle. Now that is some dedication and also some awesomeness that he was able to achieve via his Google+ app on his phone.
Richard English raising his DotNetNuke mug as he enjoys attending the meeting from afar
By the time the meeting ended we had 12 people total on the Hangout from Egypt, the Netherlands, Ohio, Cali, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Florida, North Carolina, Nova Scotia, and a few more states up north. They weren’t all on at the same time and some came and went, but nevertheless it was very neat to open the meeting up and reach out to even more people via the Hangout. At the end of the meeting the guys on the hangout were all commenting on how everything went well and they said they really enjoyed it. Some remarked that they felt like they were there and that the video and audio was very clear. They could even read the text that was presented on the screen. We asked them if they thought joining the hangout added value or was beneficial for them and they all overwhelmingly remarked saying yes! They also requested that we do it more at future meetings.
Ultimately the decision to open the meeting up added a new dimension to the meeting. During the meeting we had a lot of energy in the room as well as online in the hangout. There were 2 different conversations going on at the same time and it was really cool to be a part of the live & virtual meeting at the same time. I think we’re definitely going to try to do more of these in the future and I would encourage any other user groups to give it a shot so that members in your community who aren’t in the local area can also attend and contribute.
Google+ Hangouts just changed our user group meetings for the good! And with that said…be sure to tune in to our next meeting!
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