WPDesigner » Resource

Pink for October WordPress Themes

Small Potato — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:00:21 +0000

“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).

Pink Adaptations by Charity Ondriezek
5ThirtyOne October Special by Derek Punsalan
PinkBird by Randa Clay
Stripes and Business by Natalie Joost
Pink for October 1 and 2 by Teresa Maree
October Pink by Courtney Elizabeth

For me, I’m participating by making this post and learning more about breast cancer. I’m not going to make the color scheme switch because pink is very hard the eyes. However, if you would like to see Wpdesigner in pink then click on the pink square at the top right hand corner of Wpdesigner’s design.

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6 Over The Top Blog Designs

Small Potato — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:05:38 +0000

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.

Capture the Nature

Miasto Fantastyki

Digital Soul

Glassy

Hamburg Wildboys

The Underlying Darkness

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Sandbox Guide and Check List

Small Potato — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:03:29 +0000

This is continually updated guide and checklist for everyone working with the Sandbox theme.

Basic Structure

div#wrapper [.hfeed]
- #header
  - h1
  - div#blog-description
- div#access
  - div.skip-link
  - sandbox_globalnav() [div#menu]
- div#container
  - div#content
    - div#nav-above [.navigation]
      - div.nav-previous
      - div.nav-next
    - div#post-the_ID() [sandbox_post_class()]
      - h2.entry-title
      - div.entry-date
      - div.entry-content
      - div.entry-meta
        
        span.author (.vcard)
        
        span.cat-links
        
        span.comments-link
    - div#nav-above [.navigation]
      - div.nav-previous
      - div.nav-next
- div#primary [.sideabar]
  - ul.xoxo
    - li#pages
    - li#categories
    - li#archives
- div#secondary [.sidebar]
  - ul.xoxo
    - li#search
    - li#rss-links
    - li#meta
- div#footer
  - span#generator-link
  - span#theme-link

Guide

Default Stylesheet Typo: Open style.css, change
span.req-field

to
span.required

.
Drop-down Links: By default, the style sheet makes the child-page links, for the horizontal menu, display as drop-down links. That does not work in all browsers. Fix it or don’t display child-page links at all. To not display them at all, add
depth=1

to
wp_list_pages()

within functions.php or use
display:none;

in style.css for the subsequent list items.
Comment on Pages: Allow commenting on certain Pages by adding a custom field. Key =
comments

. Value = (any text you want).
Dynamic Classes: On the front, archive, and search pages, post listing uses
div.post

. On Page pages, it uses
div.page

.
Page Heading Selector:
h2.page-title

replaces
h2.entry-title
Archive Headings: Archive pages use
H3

instead of
H2

for entry titles.
Comments Template: Comments [
div#comments-list

] and Trackbacks [
div#trackbacks-list

] are separated. If you want to style for both, use
div#comments

.
Custom CSS: If you aren’t using any of the default Sandbox layouts then remember to remove the CSS import in the default style.css file. For example:
@import url(’sandbox-layouts/2c-l.css’);

.
Containging Floats for Background Image: If you want a background image behind #content, #primary, and #secondary, apply
clear: both;

to #footer and use the background image on #wrapper instead of #container. Then, give #wrapper
overflow: auto;

.

Templates and Pages to Style and Validate

404.php
archive.php
archives.php
attachment.php
author.php
category.php
comments.php
- no comments
- logged in
- must login
- password protected
footer.php
index.php
links.php
page.php
search.php
sidebar.php
single.php

If you find any mistake in this guide, please post your correction in the comments.

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46 Pretty In Pink Designs

Small Potato — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:57:17 +0000

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.

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Sandbox Skins

Small Potato — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:24:10 +0000

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.

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My Account Widget

Small Potato — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 20:36:15 +0000

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

Download My Account

Sources:

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Plugins That Powers Wpdesigner

Small Potato — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 08:00:23 +0000

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.

Clean Options

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.

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13 Double Right Sidebars WordPress Themes

Small Potato — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 23:59:54 +0000

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.

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Comment Avatars

Small Potato — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 08:00:12 +0000

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.

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Check List for WordPress Designers

Small Potato — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 08:00:33 +0000

First, bookmark the WordPress theme check list. Second, here are some more items to add to your check list.

Cross version (Backward) compatibility

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

? 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

wp_list_categories

wp_list_cats

? 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.

Have you tested your theme?

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

posts_nav_link

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

.alignleft

.alignright

, and

.centered

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

depth=1

to it. And, don’t hard code any link within the horizontal menu. For example, don’t link to the About page using

http://www.yoursite.com/about/

; use

or something like that. If you do use a horizontal menu, don’t forget to test

wp_list_pages()

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?

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WPDesigner » Resource

Pink for October WordPress Themes

6 Over The Top Blog Designs

Sandbox Guide and Check List

Basic Structure

Guide

Templates and Pages to Style and Validate

46 Pretty In Pink Designs

Sandbox Skins

My Account Widget

Plugins That Powers Wpdesigner

13 Double Right Sidebars WordPress Themes

Zeke - Preview

Fresh

myJournal Hypereal - Preview

Grid Focus

Vertigo - Preview

Pride - Preview

News Blue 0.1 - Preview

Silhouette 3 Columns - Preview

Qwilm! 0.3 - Preview

Sakura3 - Preview

Dust 3.17 - Preview

Bluebird 1.0 - Preview

Seashore - Preview

Comment Avatars

Check List for WordPress Designers

Cross version (Backward) compatibility

Have you tested your theme?