“Web sites will Go Pink during the month of October to bring attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, get people talking about breast cancer, and raise money for research.”
Not everyone is able to make the switch to pink. Fortunately, there are generous theme authors out there providing pink WordPress themes specifically for Pink for October (P4O). (more…)
When you think of blog designs, you think of simple, rounded corners with nice little gradient buttons for navigation. This list will show you the other side of blog design and show you where to find design talents.
This is continually updated guide and checklist for everyone working with the Sandbox theme.
to
.
to
within functions.php or use
in style.css for the subsequent list items.
. Value = (any text you want).
. On Page pages, it uses
.
replaces
instead of
for entry titles.
] and Trackbacks [
] are separated. If you want to style for both, use
.
.
to #footer and use the background image on #wrapper instead of #container. Then, give #wrapper
.
If you find any mistake in this guide, please post your correction in the comments.
Use of the color pink is far and few in web design. With Pink October coming up soon, I’ve put together a list of pink inspirations for your future designs and October facelifts.
(more…)
WordPress is moving closer to style (CSS) only themes. I’m starting this continually updated list to anticipate the influx of demand and supply for Sandbox skins as it looks like Sandbox is going to be the default template for later WordPress versions.
It’s important to understand that the following are skins only, not complete WordPress themes. Use the skins below with your Sandbox theme.
This widget allows you to place a login form in the sidebar. Use it to easily log into your account without having to load the login page. After logging in, the widget will give you several options, based on your account’s privileges.
Files
Sources:
Wpdesigner.com actually uses the following plugins:
Ajax Comments 2.0
Allow your users to post a comment without reloading the page.
Probably one of the best ways you could spice up your WordPress Blog with AJAX; readers love it! Must see for yourself.
Akismet
This plugin filters spam comments. To install it, you need an API key; and to get the API key, you need a WordPress.com account.
Akismet has protected your site from 18,799 spam comments.
Author Highlight
Allows you to add a unique style to comments made by you, the blog author. This plugin is easy to install, practical, and important, especially important for this blog. It makes it easier for readers to easily spot my comments for things like answers to tutorial questions.
Finds orphaned options and allows for their removal from the wp_options table.
It’s good for cleaning up your blog after removing unwanted plugins.
Comment License
I use this to clarify how I handle comments posted on this blog.
By submitting a comment here you grant this site a perpetual license to reproduce your words and name/web site in attribution. Inappropriate comments will be removed at my discretion.
Executable PHP Widget
Use this for activating sidebar widget plugins.
Feedburner Feed Replacement
Feedburner has taken over the development of this plugin and renamed it to Feedsmith. It redirects all your subscribers to using your feed from Feedburner so you could keep track of the actual number of subscribers.
Live
This is the only toy on my plugins list. You get to watch the actions on your blog, live.
MyAvatars
Put a face to your blog commenters (those that have an account on MyBlogLog).
Optimal Title
Instead of the default title structure, for example, Wpdesigner > About, this plugin switches it around to About > Wpdesigner. It’s good for search engine optimization (SEO) reasons.
Preview Frame
Due to the recent changes in WordPress 2.2, use this plugin to bring back the preview frame while your drafting a post.
RSS Feed Signature
I use this plugin to tag all my posts with a copyright message and a link back Wpdesigner.com. It’s a nice way to protect your content and piggyback splogs (spam blogs) for more traffic.
runPHP
Allows you to use PHP code within your posts.
Subscribe To Comments
This one lets readers subscribe to comments and follow the conversation through email notifications.
WordPress Download Monitor
I use this to keep track of WordPress theme downloads.
WP-Polls
This comes with a sidebar widget. Run polls within your posts or in the sidebar.
At this point, it’s very time consuming to put together a top plugins list because there are so many plugins out there. That’s why I chose to put together a list for plugins that I actually use.
What works for one blog doesn’t necessarily work for another. That’s why it’s important to test the plugins for yourself.
For me, I’m very picky. If it’s hard to install or hard to uninstall, I wouldn’t bother with it in the first place. Also, I wouldn’t install plugins that need extensive integrations or theme modifications several months after launching a blog. If I ever need a plugin like that, I would decide for sure before I launch my blog.
Double right sidebars blog designs are popular nowadays. However, free double right sidebars WordPress themes are far and few. Therefore, I took some time to put together a list of free WordPress themes with double right sidebars.
Adding comment avatars to your blog is a great way to quickly recognize comment authors and distinguish same name commenters. It also bring a community vibe to your blog. Here’s an example:
Although there’s no one central avatar system, fortunately, there’s practically a plugin for every avatar system. Pick the system you prefer, download the matching plugin, and then install and integrate the plugin to start displaying avatars with comments.
Currently, Wpdesigner is using the MyAvatars plugin to integrate avatars from MyBlogLog. For the long time Gravatar users, there are several available plugins. For examples: WP Gravatar and Gravatar 2.
Of course, no one external avatar system will catch all commenters. No worries, there’s a localized avatar plugin that allows your users to upload their own avatar. You then decide which factor to recognize the commenters by (name, email, etc.), in order to assign the uploaded avatars.
First, bookmark the WordPress theme check list. Second, here are some more items to add to your check list.
If you can make your design work across multiple browsers then why not enable your theme to work across multiple versions? Not all WordPress blogs sport the latest WordPress version anyway.
For one, is your search form using
or
? I can’t tell the difference between the two because I’m PHP clueless, but I know that wp_specialchars work with 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2.
For another example, are you using
or
? Wp_list_cats is the older of the two, which is the one that works with 2.0, 2.1, and WordPress 2.2.
For more new versus old functions, read Lorelle’s Template Tag and Function Changes.
You never know what bloggers are going to use your theme for and what features they might turn on. I’d recommend installing WordPress locally (on your computer) in order to easily test it. Here’s how to install WordPress locally on Windows or Mac.
After installing WordPress, create filler content posts, about 11 or 21 of them so you can test the
function for the Previous Page and Next Page links. Make sure one of the filler posts have a long title that takes up at least two lines so you can test the line height of the post title when it’s time to use CSS.
Within one of those filler posts, you should test your images. One photo aligns left, another aligns right, and another one in the center (see example). Below are my codes for styling images within a post.
img.centered{
display: block;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
}
img.alignright{
padding: 4px;
margin: 3px 0 2px 10px;
display: inline;
}
img.alignleft{
padding: 4px;
margin: 3px 10px 2px 0;
display: inline;
}
.alignleft{
float: left;
}
.alignright{
float: right;
}
The use of
,
, and
is based on Kubrick.
Within a different post, test the order and unordered lists (see example). There’s more stuff to test, in example: blockquotes, code, and headings (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6).
Horizontal menu - If your theme has a horizontal menu, make sure you apply
to it. And, don’t hard code any link within the horizontal menu. For example, don’t link to the About page using
; use
or something like that. If you do use a horizontal menu, don’t forget to test
in the regular sidebar listing. The best way to do it is to create multiple levels of links (see example).
With this check list combined with the last one, did I leave anything out?
Do you want comments on your blog posted without reloading the page? You can achieve that effect by implementing Ajax comments. There are two ways to do it. The first is installing a plugin and second is learning how to integrate Ajax commenting manually.
If you don’t want to do it manually then Mike Smullin’s Ajax Comments 2.0 plugin can help you setup Ajax commenting in less than five minutes. Installation is simply uploading and activation. Note: Spam Karma does not work well with this plugin. Mike suggests that you use the Authimage plugin instead of Spam Karma.
For the do-it-yourselfers, Safirul Alredha has a step-by-step tutorial on how to integrate Ajax comment. This tutorial assumes that your
file is based on the WordPress default theme, Kubrick,
file, which would be true for most free themes.
It’ll take you a little over five minutes to integrate Ajax comments manually, without making a mistake.
Currently, Wpdesigner uses the Ajax Comments 2.0 plugin. Test it for yourself by posting a comment.
update: Ajax Comments has been turned off.
I’m trying to do a lot with the upcoming WordPress theme. As a result, I’ve been going through quite a few tips, tweaks, and tutorials to up my skills as a WordPress theme designer. Below are some of the features that I’ve read about and will be adding to Greed for its official release.
Thank you for visiting Wpdesigner.com. To get in touch with me, go to feedback for contact information.
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