Category — Blogging

For those of you who like to make and edit Wordpress themes, this bit of information on how to keep your theme upgradeable is extremely cool.

While many people like to make Wordpress themes from scratch, one of the best ways to get the most bang for your buck is to use someone elses hard labor to your own benefit.  There are a ton of talented theme developers out there, and if you are going to use a classic three column design, why would you want to start from scratch.  Lots of great themes exist in the open source realm that make excellent starting blocks for your own work.

There is a bit of a problem though - the theme that you are basing your work off of is likely still changing and getting better.  How can you base your own theme on another, and still be able to seamlessly upgrade the base theme without having to do much work on your own?  Use a Child Theme, thats how!

Simply by adding the following line:

Template: **name of base theme here**

to the header of your style.css file, you can use all of the files of the base theme, and simply have whatever you put in the child theme override the styles, etc. of the base theme.

For more information, check out this article on ThemeShaper.

Wordpress, Wordpress Theme, Themes

My brother was philosophizing about cheap clients on his blog.  He is spot on with his commentary.  I’m writing this as unfortunate proof that the sickness in not unique to the animation industry.

How is it that people can be this stupid?

Check out this advertisement for a web design job.

What the heck is his person thinking?  Hmm.  Let’s see.  I have to come to their office, train their sorry butt (because that’s really what they mean by “work with me on this”), and then I have to make 500 pages for their website.

OK.  Project understood.  Now, how much do they want to pay me for this?  UNDER $100!!!!!!!

UNDER $100.  Not even a hundred.  Under that.  Because, at $100, we’d be talking $0.20 a page, which is clearly too much to pay for my services.

Wow.

For anyone wondering, a half way decent website is going to cost you several thousand dollars.  Throw in e-commerce, and it is going to be more.  If you are flexible and willing to use open source stuff and are not a crazy design Nazi, you might be able to get it done for $5-7K.  If you want something that looks unique and professional, it will cost more.

If you want it based on a Content Management System so that you can update it yourself, it will cost even more.

If your site is worth having (financially), then its worth spending money on.  You don’t open a store and expect to do it with $500.  Why would anyone think that they can do it on the web?  ESPECIALLY if you are selling something!  At least with a store, people can come in and look at what you have, see who you are and make a decision to buy from you or not.  On the web, all they have to go by is your site.

Which site would you trust with your personal information? This one:

or this one:

Design matters.  Professionalism matters.  A look of legitimacy matters.  And, all of these are going to cost money.

Oh, and please don’t take this rant as evidence that I think I’m the best web specialist in the world.  Clearly I’m not.  I can’t design worth crap.  Yet, even I’m $250 an hour at my rack rate.  Do I do a lot of web work?  Yup, going on 15 years now.  Why would anyone expect to spend less on their online “entity” than they did on legally setting up their business?  Many lawyers are way more expensive than $250 an hour.  Find a web specialist than can command the same rate, and you won’t be sorry.  If you don’t, your site may look like this:

Anyway, I’m off my soapbox.  Sorry for all the suds.

Web Design, Web Site Costs, Cheap Clients

I can’t believe I’m going to break my blogging hiatus with an esoteric post on how to fix an annoying error when upgrading to Wordpress 2.5.1.

But, I’m going to…

For those of you who have upgraded Wordpress only to have the following error flash across your screen:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_register_sidebar_widget() in xxxxxxxxx/blog/wp-admin/includes/dashboard.php on line 32

when you try to log into the WP-ADMIN dashboard, there is a simple cure - IF you happen to be using the K2 theme for your blog.

The problem is that earlier versions of K2 used their sidebar system, which required you to disable widgets for Wordpress.  Well, the new admin screen doesn’t like that one bit and it makes it so that you can’t log in.

What’s the cure?  Simple - remove the K2 plugin from the Active Plugins option in the database.

How do you do that?  Log into phpmyadmin and go to the wp_options table and select Browse.  Look for the active_plugins entry (mine was option_id #39) and click the pencil to edit the entry.

The entry will probably look something like this:

a:3:{i:0;s:0:"";i:1;s:19:"akismet/akismet.php";i:2;s:29:"disable-wordpress-widgets.php";}

What you need to do is delete out the disable-wordpress-widgets entry, or it may be named widgets-removal.php or something similar instead.  How do you do this?  Simply remove the quoted call to the php file, and the "i" and "s" entries immediately prior to that call.  So, in my install, the entry above becomes:

a:3:{i:0;s:0:"";i:1;s:19:"akismet/akismet.php";}

It looks much more complicated than it really is.  Once that entry is gone, you can go back to the wp-admin section and log in without a hitch.

As an aside - the latest versions of K2 have a checkbox in their theme options to handle this problem.  To avoid the issue, I’d recommend upgrading K2 first, then upgrading wordpress to 2.5.1.  OR, for those who are reading this prior to the WP 2.5.1 upgrade (if there indeed are any!) - simply use the wp-admin plugin screen to disable the "disable wordpress widgets" plugin before you upgrade.  Then, this will all be a moot point. 

I warned you it was esoteric.

Anyway, you can read more here: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/164296

You can also handle this a different way by reading this entry as well.

K2, Wordpress 2.5.1, Wordpress Upgrade Problems

If you use WordPress a lot like I do, you’ve no doubt noticed the shortcomings of TinyMCE, the default WYSIWYG text editor for writing posts and pages.  I’ve looked into replacing it in the past, but never came up with a viable option that didn’t cost a bunch of money or that wasn’t a headache to manage.

Today in my web travels (researching how to write a Webservice with PHP) I came across FCKEditor, a free text editor that seems to have a lot more going for it that TinyMCE.  I began to look into how I could incorporate it with WordPress when it hit me - DUH, someone has likely already done this work.  So, I googled FCKEditor and Wordpress and sure enough, a kind gentleman by the name of Dean has made a plugin to marry the two together.

It’s as simple as downloading his plugin and activating it.  Within 2 minutes, I was writing this message to let everyone know the good news.

So far, FCKEditor seems to be exactly what I wanted - more power over my WordPress posts with less hassle to do it.  It’s what I was hoping for with Contribute CS3, but I’ve already let you know how that went.

Here’s a quick screenshot of it:

In fact, it has it’s own image upload manager, which is really great.  I used it to put up that image and it went so much smoother than it would have been otherwise - between using the WordPress option or FTPing it myself and copying the URL, getting the capitlization correct, etc.

So, two thumbs  for now.  I’ll let you know more as I discover it!

UPDATE:

Here is a picture of the full editor - just so you can see that it isn’t as "limited" as the pic above suggests…

FCKEditor, Wordpress, Wordpress Plug-in

I’m in the process of potentially redesigning this blog, and I came across an interesting study from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services about line length and reading. This report states that while a long line of text increases reading speeds, people tend to prefer shorter lines. To borrow from the conclusion of the study:

Conclusion

The best available research suggests that users will read fastest if the line lengths are longer (up to 10 inches). If the line lengths are too short (e.g., two and a half inch columns), the line length probably will impede rapid reading. Users tend to prefer lines that are relatively short (about four inches).

While the study doesn’t go any further, I feel like it leaves me with a sort of conundrum. People prefer the shorter lines, but things like pictures, YouTube videos, etc. are best done with a larger content area. Then, add to this the desire for a multi-column design for a pleasing segregation of similar content, things become even more problematic.

Also to be considered:

1. Older PC’s have smaller resolutions
2. Most newer monitors are wide screen (because they can get more screens per sheet of material, equaling a lower cost)
3. Most newer machines have higher resolutions
4. Some people prefer a fluid center (grows as they increase the browser size)
5. A static width site provides better overall design options for visual impact

What’s the magic formula for a pleasing design with a flexible layout for varied content and overall ease of use for the reader? Who knows! There seems to be no general consensus. If you search the net, layouts are all over the place. Content is king, but the king’s accommodations are widely varied.

Three column, content to the left is a newer take on things, but it just seems a bit weird to me - does anyone ever look all the way to the right? Most major news companies go with the standard three column design with centered content, but then they have a ton of information that clutters up the flow, much to the detriment of conveying information in my opinion. Oh well, they are free, right?

Leaving the old standbys for a second, we can venture into the world of more free form site design. These sites are more focused on overall visual design and can look pretty cool. Unfortunately, they tend to primarily have highly static content - get it to look good once, and then never touch it again - or they at least feature visual content like pictures over text.

If I take the lessons that I learned with this current theme (forever captured here for the sake of posterity), I realize that there are a few things that I’m looking for in a new theme. First, is a wider column on the right. That small column, while helpful in keeping the overall width down, really cramps my style. It won’t hold a standard 120 pixel width banner and the type has to be so darn small to get things to fit. Second, I would like a larger content space to accommodate larger photos, but the line length study makes me second guess this desire. At a current 4.5 inches, my site is already past the 3 - 3.5 inch range that readers seem to prefer. And, lastly, I think I would like something a bit more light and open. The current design is a bit blocky and has more of a closed feel. Ideally, I’d like to see that open up a bit with some sections flowing into the general background.

Can I take all of that stuff into consideration and come up with a new design that is worth changing to? Honestly I don’t know. When I look at the themes of people who are a lot more talented that I am in the fields of programming and design, I really don’t see anything that is particularly compelling. The one thing I do know is this: when and if I find the right structure, I am certainly not above ripping it off! All with due props, of course…

web design, ease of use, blogging, optimal line length

Well, I’ve finally written my first widget for Wordpress.  Introducing Movie Widget!

I wanted a quick way to randomly display titles from my DVD collection on my blog.  I use Movie Collector to manage the collection, so I exported some XML from the program and started parsing it up.  Eventually, this little widget was born.

I mostly wrote this for myself (in fact, it started out as just custom code in my theme) but I’ve been wanting to try my hand at writing a widget for a while, so I figured I would widgetize the code.  Once it was a widget, I decided that widgets are made to be shared and that I should make it available to anyone else who happens to use both Movie Collector and Wordpress.

You can get the plugin here.

Wordpress Widget, Movie Collector, Collectorz

So, I was writing a post on how I was checking out Contribute CS3, but it didn’t go so well.

Adobe bills Contribute as

Adobe® Contribute® CS3 enables content authors to quickly and easily update existing websites and blogs while maintaining site integrity — with no technical expertise required.

A lofty goal to be sure. Honestly, I was very excited to try it. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to provide very much value add to the whole blogging experience.  To make matters worse, just as I was in the process of saying that it didn’t provide better:

• Writing experience
• Editing
• Spell checking
• or Previewing

when the program just up and pooped the bed.  Yup, just froze up on me.  In fact, here is a little pic of it doing just that.

Talk about disappointment!  Helpful blogging tool for the technically challenged?  I think not.  The thing didn’t even HAVE the word blog in the darn spell checker.  Need I say more?

And, while I’m at it, what’s so hard about writing a new post in WordPress, or MT or Blogger for that matter.   If for some crazy reason their WYSIWYG editors scare the pants off of some one, just use email submission.  Easy, quick and done from their email application of choice!

Still, I wish that Contribute had the chops to go the distance.  I think there is room for a tool of this nature - there’s a lot of space between Dreamweaver and Outlook.  Maybe CS4 will see a better incarnation.

PS - After the crap that I gave Contribute for not having Blog in the spell checking dictionary, WordPress doesn’t have its own name in the dictionary either…  Wow, I think that’s the first thing I’ve ever said about WordPress that can be construed as even remotely negative.  :)  Not bad for nearly 2 years!

CS3 Contribute, Blogging