Catching up on my back blog reading, when what to my wondering eyes should appear than this magnum opus from Alan Levine. What’s one level up from alpha dog? Whatever it is, he is it.

For anyone who wants a thorough and wonderfully graded approach to customizing WordPress, look no farther. Alan’s come up with some gems lately, but this one combines all his strengths: storytelling, experimentation, encouragement, and sheer smarts. I’m overdue for a WP upgrade–and I need to fix that silly footer-spam issue so I can get my flickr badge back–but I’m going to study Alan’s post long and hard for ideas and inspiration as I work on Gardner Writes.

Did I ever tell you about the first time I saw Alan at a conference? New Orleans, 2005, ELI Annual Meeting. A truly fateful meeting for me, as it was also the first time I saw Croquet, the first time I took a team from UMW to an ELI/NLII meeting, and the first time I did live blogging from an ELI conference. I heard John Bransford at that meeting. It was Diana Oblinger’s first annual meeting as the new Director of ELI. Martha did a poster presentation on bots and intelligent agents, getting that gig after her wonderful participation in the Cyberealspace experience at EDUCAUSE 2004.

And where was Alan? In Phoenix, of course. But also at the conference, by way of webcam hookup, gloriously on display during the Horizon 5 minutes of Fame event. (I miss those.) Little did I know that this guy would play such an enormous role in my own development. It’s been three years since, and only two years since we finally met face-to-face at ELI, San Diego, 2006 Annual Meeting–but Alan’s the kind of teacher who can put thirty years years of education into three years of friendship and collegiality.

So I figure I’m embarrassing the CogDog right now, but them’s the breaks: when you’re doing the kind of work he’s doing, you’ve got to expect some fanboys.

Thanks, Alan. I’ve got a lot more to learn. I couldn’t ask for a better teacher.