Please check it out, and let me know what you think!

And as these things go, a change of circumstances has prompted me to update it again. I was working for The Weather Channel on a six-month contract, which was cut a few weeks short by budget changes there. Of course, this meant that the timeline of my search for a new working gig shifted into high gear, but since all fell right at the Christmas/New Year holiday junction, I’ve found myself temporarily without work.

So, between job interviews, I’ve been trying to put some spare time to good use by updating my portfolio. I’ve added four major websites that I’ve worked on during the last two years: Doctor Oz, NCAA.com, PGA.com, and Weather.com. In addition, I added entries for two older projects of mine, Ping-o-Matic, and Twitual.

Working on the site has also rekindled my interest in moving my personal blog, geek ramblings, under the dougal.us domain. I still need to decide how I want to manage the organization, but I think I will eventually move forward with that migration.

WordCamp Birmingham takes place this weekend, January 14 & 15, 2012, and last I heard there are still a few tickets available. If you’ve been waffling over whether or not to go, just do it! WordCamps are very friendly and social, and the cost for this 2-day event is only $35, which is amazingly cheap compared to your typical technical conference (which can run from the $hundreds or even over $1,000). You’ll be able to meet with and pick the brains of some of the brightest minds in the WordPress community (and me, too). Will I see you there?

But now I’m going to try getting the site back in shape, just on general principle. I’ve purchased the Genesis Framework, and I’ve got Portfolio Slideshow Pro running on the front page. I don’t have the sites and individual project pages linked up yet, but at least there’s no longer a big, useless, empty space staring at you.

Everything is still pretty bare-bones at the moment. I need to fix up the portfolio as mentioned above, and I need to start building a child theme and customizing the styling. Then, hopefully, I can start posting some actual content again — at least occasionally.

While I will speak a bit specifically about WordPress, the subject matter pretty much applies to any online project or community, and some of the problems don’t just apply to large or very popular projects. If you are involved in any online community, whether as a leader or just an onlooker, you might be interested in getting a heads-up about what kinds of problems you might face one day.

Most of my time here will be spent in developer-oriented talks, but currently, I’m sitting in on Lisa Sabin-Wilson‘s WordPress for Dummies Q&A session. We have a copy of the 1st edition, which we passed down to our older daughter, but I want to get a copy of her BuddyPress for Dummies, too.

I find that it can be enlightening to hear the questions that beginners ask. As a developer, I often tend to focus on advanced, esoteric corners of the system. But, hearing the questions asked by beginners often inspires me with ideas for plugins or patches to improve features that I might not have looked at as closely. For me, this is the biggest appeal of coming to a WordCamp (even as a plain old attendee instead of a speaker, like I’ve been at other WordCamps) — meeting users and other developers, and getting fresh insight into new things to work on, or new approaches to old problems. Networking for the win!

In addition, I will occasionally post about projects that I’ve worked on, either personally or professionally. I may also sometimes run experiments here with new plugins or themes, especially here in the early stages. In particular, I will probably end up switching themes soon.