I don't want you to miss the author's story of Kevin, a down-syndrome affected 26 y.o. Kevin's physical anomalies affected his ability to speak. He used sign language and grunts.

The pastor called Kevin forward in front of the congregation to give share his testimony, and the pastor asked questions which Kevin then would find a way to answer.

  Do you think Play is soul training?

Several years ago I was part of a Covenant Group. We set some "rules of life" to live by together. After much discussion about what our "rules" would be, we decided one of our rules of life needed to be "playing!"

Playing! Come, on. Playing? Isn't that the opposite of soul training? Like, be serious.

We realized that all of the people in this group tended to hold jobs with high responsibilities and much stress, and that our collective sense of perfectionism sometimes kept us from a much needed holy act. Yep, we didn't play very well! We felt guilty when we just played!

One of the reasons I joined "the Joomla! band wagon" originally was because I couldn't code a paragraph. I knew nothing - complete idiot when it came to code. I drove my son (computer science geek) nuts! 

All kidding aside, let me share a few serious thoughts on how this general debate (whether you have to be able to code to design a web page) affects the non-coder and creating open source Joomla! sites. I've been working with Joomla! for about 5 years now. I began the process without knowing code (xhtml, css), and found it frustrating at best. Perhaps you're frustrated.

"If it's so wonderful and does so much, why is it so frustrating to build?"

In case you missed the amazing lights of the fast-burning web-fire, Elliot Jay Stocks did it.

What did he do? He tweeted this (drum roll please) . . .

"Honestly, I'm shocked that in 2010 I'm still coming across 'web designers' who can't code their own designs. No excuse."

Phew, did he light that match?

He explains beyond the tweet, that in his opinion, all web designers should know html and css. (He did not mean to say that all web designers should know php, javascript, etc.)

 My question(s): Is there no room in the web design world for pure art? Have we become so "context oriented" that we won't allow artists to push us beyond where we are now? Isn't it an advantage having someone who doesn't know all of the limitations of web coding, imagine more? How do we go beyond the proverbial box?

IMHO, designers/artists know just as much as coders - on the other half of the world. But they don't expect, although maybe they should, that coders and software designers know what they know?

Mostly, I just love playing the other side of the argument and having a bit of fun with this! See Elliot's trench digging on his site: http://elliotjaystocks.com/blog/web-designers-who-cant-code/.

Next Post: Do you have to know code (xhtml, css, some PHP) to design in Joomla?

"Repent for the Kingdom of heaven has come near" Matthew 4:17

• "He put before them another parable: 'The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field.'" (Matthew 13:24)

• "'The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.'" (Matthew 13:31)

•  "'To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."' (Luke 13:20-21)

• "'appearing to [the disciples] during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.'" (Acts 1:3)

Real World: I wanted to make an expanding, adjustable, rounded corner, complicated module. I didn't want to just add some nice border to the module. I wanted fancy.

Easier said than done. But it can be done. Here's how.

I'm going to use the basis of another tutorial. You can access that other tutorial at WebDesignerWall, here. But I'll tell you what you need to know from that tutorial now. You can download my image files here, and it will eventually look like this.

Step 1: Make a box you want on the site! See my tutorial. 

( How to design my own module in Joomla.)

Step 2: Go into your administrator back-end, Extensions>Module Manager, and set-up a module (New module -->Custom HTML -->Enable). Under PARAMETERS on the right of the module set-up, you will notice a box called "suffix." Type in the name of your module design you will code. In other words, if your module will be called "bird," in the suffix box put underscore bird or _bird, no spaces.

For our  purposes, the module will be called "sunbox." This is how the module parameters would look for this exercise:

The top 10 ministry impacting things I learned from AHA! conference today.

Today's online conference which gave 6 minutes to 40 leaders to share the biggest AHA! moment of their ministry and life inspires me to write about the top 10 AHA's I heard! I tried to knock it down to 5, but couldn't do it. And I'm leaving so much out! Ugh.

The high of the Conference: Leaders who unashamedly shared an intimate nature of coming to grips with sin putting wedges between them and Jesus.

The low of the conference: The infomercials on what books you've gotta buy or read - so you can do ministry. This is the opposite fo the message coming through humble leaders we heard!  Obviously, sales were the number one hoped for outcome. Darn, and I thought it would be all about Jesus and serving Him? Ok, enough whining. Drum roll please . . .

"If I had been asked, fresh out of seminary, "What is the gospel of Jesus? I would have said, without hesitation, "Jesus died for our sins so that we can go to heaven when we die." . . . I still believe this today. The gospel--which literally means 'the good news'--of Christianity certainly contains this message ... What I later discovered was that there is even more good news." (Chapter 2, The Good and Beautiful Life)

Can't wait to try this out with Joomla! Anybody working with this on Joomla yet? I can see Bible studies ... Board meetings ... 

 

Spiritual Exercise:

Take 5-10 minutes to sit still with Jesus. 

Ask this question in conversation with him: What would my good and beautiful life look like? What would I be doing? What would you have me doing? What kind of quality would I feel? What quality would you have me feel? Will it involve a major life change?