This page has a summary of websites and plug-ins that I’ve developed.
All of my websites use a tool called WordPress. WordPress is used by 65% of all websites whose content management system is known, which is 41% of the top 10 million websites. It uses ‘themes’ to customize the look and feel of the website, and ‘plug-ins’ to add functionality to a website. ‘child themes’ are written by me to add my own customizations to a theme.
Contents
Websites
Theophilus – Joe and Mary Ann’s personal website
URL: thelesters.net
Date: July, 2011
Theme: Thematic. Thematic is a ‘framework’ theme designed to be used with a child theme. It is no longer supported, and I’ve had to update it myself to fix bugs with new versions of PHP. (PHP is a computer programming language used on web servers; a webserver is a computer on the internet that hosts a website).
Child Theme: Clearcreek. Named after a place we like to camp: West Clear Creek. I used this child theme to implement major changes to completely customize the website.
TODO: This website is old and the technology is obsolete. It needs to be redone so that it is ‘responsive’ (i.e. it adjusts the interface with smaller screens, such as smartphones and tablets).
Purpose and history: This is my first website, which I created in 2011. I used it to learn about website development, and I have a couple of posts about it. See here and here. When I first created the site I mostly wanted to use it as a vehicle to learn about website development, and didn’t have a good idea what I would use it for. I thought Mary Ann and the kids would use it. Since I developed it, social media has taken off, and the kids used that. Mary Ann hasn’t shown any interest in using it. As it turns out, I use it mostly for posting photographs, documenting trips, and posting family related things. Why is it called ‘Theophilus’? When I was creating the site I had to pick a name, and I didn’t really understand how it would be used. St. Luke wrote his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles to Theophilus. In Greek, the name means ‘God Lover’, or some translate it as ‘God Seeker’. I liked that name and chose it, and it has stuck (i.e. I haven’t changed it).
You Visited Me – I was in prison and you visited me
URL: youvisitedmedphx.com. ‘You Visited Me’ is from Matthew 25:36 “I was in prison and you visited me”. The ‘dphx’ on the end is for ‘Diocese of Phoenix’; dphx.org is used by the Diocese.
Date: January, 2018
Theme: Hestia. I picked this because my friend recommended it.
Child Theme: mogollon. Named after the Mogollon Rim in Arizona. It implements very minor changes.
Purpose and History: I volunteer for the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix Prison Ministry at a Maricopa County jail called Lower Buckeye Jail (LBJ). I help by providing Communion service to inmates, doing one on one visits with inmates, and coordinating volunteers for the jail. I developed this website as a vehicle for communication with the LBJ volunteers. I keep track of all the volunteers visits in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, and I wrote Google Application Script (GAS) to compute statics and summaries of the visits for use by the diocese to report to the county, and also determine if we need more or less volunteers.
Viri Virtutes – Viri Virtutes Forum
URL: virivirtutes.com. ‘Viri Virtutes’ is Latin for ‘men of virtue’.
Date: January, 2021
Theme: customify. I found this through some research. I liked it because it allowed more flexibility for customization as compared to Hestia.
Child Theme: Ocotillo. Named after the Ocotillo cactus. It implements very minor changes.
Purpose and History: Aaron and Father Charlie were starting a new class for young Catholic men for instruction in how to live a virtuous life. Aaron asked if I could help with the website. Aaron had in mind what he wanted the website design to look like, so I just tried to follow that. He wanted a somewhat ‘minimalist’ look. He also wanted to make the site a forum that class participants could use to exchange ideas. That was the biggest challenge for me, because I hadn’t done a forum site before. As it turns out, the class instructors haven’t used or encouraged the forum features, so it isn’t used much.
Kolbe Mission – Freedom from Addiction
URL: kolbemission.com. The Kolbe Mission is the name of the non profit to server people with addictions.
Date: May, 2021
Theme: customify. I liked using this on Viri Virtutes, so I used it again on Kolbe Mission.
Child Theme: Cholla. Named after the Cholla cactus. It implements very minor changes.
Purpose and History: The Director of Prison Ministry, Kevin, was working on a non-profit to serve people with addictions by providing an addiction recovery home, called The Kolbe Mission. He wanted a website. I told him that I’m not a professional website developer, but I could come up with something that would work for us until the non-profit grew to a point where the needs exceeded my capabilities. The biggest challenge for me on this website was providing the ability to donate online, since I hadn’t done it before.
Oil Paintings by Bertica Garcia Dubus – Recognizing the Beauty of Creation
URL: bgaleria.com
Date: September, 2021
Theme: Astra. I found some youtube videos that recommended using this theme with the Elementor plug-in, which allows a lot of customization. I decided to try it. After using it, I like it, and will use it in the future.
Child Theme: none.
Purpose and History: Our friend Bertica is an artist, and she had several websites that she was having trouble maintaining. I offered to help. I looked at what she had and tried to fix it. It was acting very strangely, and nothing I tried to fix it worked. She was using out-of-date themes that were no longer supported, and I think that was the problem. I told Bertica that I thought the best solution was to redo her site with a theme that is still supported. I created a new website for her, and I made the site look like her existing site, which is what she wanted. By the way: the ‘galeria’ in bgaleria.com is not misspelled, but is the Spanish word for galleria (i.e. it’s similar to the English word, but has just one ‘l’).
Hair by Nancy – Wichita’s best stylist
Date: December, 2021
Theme: Astra. Same as sued on bgaleria.com
Child Theme: none
Purpose and History: My sister-in-law, Nancy, decided to open up her own hair styling shop. She wanted a website, and I volunteered to help. She wanted a very simple and understated site that provided information to her customers and potential customers.
WordPress Plug-ins
I’ve developed some plug-ins as a last resort when I couldn’t find any available free plug-ins to do what I needed. A plug-in uses custom software (written in PHP and java script) to add functionality to a website. None of my plug-ins are ‘polished’ enough to put on the WordPress Plug-in site, so they are only for my use.
Tag Gallery Page 2
This plugin is used to create what I call a ‘Photo Browser’. It allows you to browse through photos using a browser tree. You can see it in use here. I did a couple of posts about this plug-in here and here. I create the browser tree structure using Keywords from the program I use to digitally develop photographs, which is Adobe Lightroom. I wrote a program to convert the Lightroom keywords into a ‘json’ file that is used to create the Photo Browser. JSON is a standard file format, and stands for JavaScript Object Notation.
SD Thank You Email
I use a plug-in called ‘Seamless Donations’ on kolbemission.com to handle online donations. The default capability for sending a thank you email to donors was pretty limited. They offer a premium (i.e. paid) feature for thank you emails, but it still didn’t do what I wanted. So, I created my own plug-in to do it. It allows me to put a custom header in a separate file, and also customize how the email is written (use html; new keywords used in the email form; etc). To see the how it works, you would have to make a donation! See here.
Audio Clip Player
When I first started working on virivirtutes.com, Aaron said they needed the capability to play just a portion of an audio clip. I couldn’t find a plug-in to do this, so I wrote my own. After I wrote it, they changed their minds and decided not to use it. However, I did use it on kolbemission.com to play a portion of Kevin’s talk on the radio show ‘The Bishop’s Hour’. You can see how it works here.