Weblog Tools Collection

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The folks over at PerfectSurf.de have published a tutorial which goes into detail on how you can create your own personal slideshow to appear on the frontpage of your WordPress powered site. This slideshow feature has been seen in numerous premium themes as of late and now you can create one for yourself via this tutorial. A slideshow is great for showcasing images within a gallery or showing off images related to top news items on your blog. The tutorial is not meant for beginners, but those of you who understand terms such as The Loop, excerpt and permalink, you should be fine.

There are some caveats to this process which are outlined in the requirements:

There are many ways of embedding slideshows to your website. This tutorial is based on a Wordpress 2.5 installation (with some files customized and of course all files updated that were critical in WP2.5 concerning security issues!). Moreover you need to BUY a plugin that was originally developed for “Joomla!”, which is an open source Content Management System (CMS). The plugin is called “frontpage slideshow version 1.6? (FPSS) and it was transformed by its creators into a so called “static version” that fits into ALL websites that are PHP-based.

After going through the tutorial, you’ll notice that you need to change the slideshow file manually in order to update the content the links within the slideshow point to. This seems like a mundane approach. I believe this can be done via custom fields but I’d like to know what other ways this effect can be accomplished without having to purchase anything and without having to manually update the slideshow?

*NOTE* Tobi of the perfectsurf website left a note in the comments regarding this post:

No need to buy the FPSS anymore. I made a new plugin out of Jason Schuller’s FCG plugin, I called it FCS (Featured Category Slideshow) You find everythin at perfectsurf.de/category/fcs (by now, take the first post)

Last Tuesday, May 28, I released an update to the Sandbox theme, version 0.9. Since releasing the Sandbox back in August of 2006 Andy and I have received lots of good feedback. I called it “the theme for themers” and it has had a really positive influence on theme design within the WordPress community.

There have been more than a few themes/designs built on the Sandbox and released—and for good reason. Its highly semantic, dynamic structure make it immensely easy to design for, not to mention all the features built into its markup, like Microformats.

So I thought it was a good time for a new theme competition—or rather a “designs” competition. It has been around two years since the last successful WordPress theme competition (participants of the competitions in 2006 will roll their eyes and would include me). We’ve seen the launch of an official theme viewer, two major WordPress releases (2.1 and 2.2), two plugin competitions, and so on. So I think it’s time.

Now you probably have a thousand questions running through your brains. Let me try and answer at least a few of them.

Question: Why have a theme competition? The last two failed. Don’t you know anything?
Answer: Well, this isn’t really a “theme” competition. It’s a designs competition, similar to Alex King’s WordPress CSS Styles held back in February of 2004, that is only for style sheets (and images, of course). Folks won’t be competing to show off PHP know-how, or scripting abilities, etc., but how well they can design, use CSS, be creative, and so on.

Question: Uh, that’s boring. Every design will be pretty much the same, won’t they?
Answer: Not in the slightest. See, the Sandbox is special. It has these dynamic class-generating functions that sprinkle neat semantic classes throughout the markup, which means each page is the same, but it is also a little different. Using combinations of these classes means that style sheets can easily go beyond just arranging content into layouts by making the design relate to the content. There are so many classes that almost any layout, any design, etc., is achievable. For example, you could style posts by categories, .category-asides{…} vs. .category-important-news{…}, uniquely.

Question: Okay, that’s pretty slick. But why should I spend my time in this competition?
Answer: First, you could win more than a handful of cash. From the day one we have US$500 in cash to distribute to first, second, and third place winners (there will be a runner-up who will receive an honorarium). We’re getting sponsors to help us increase the total cash pot to US$1000. So the first-place winner will hopefully walk away US$500 richer (but at least US$250 richer). Secondly, you could be crowned a top blog designer in our little blogosphere. Not a bad title to parade around. And thirdly, you can solidify your designer creds just by participating and getting your bio tossed up on the website.

Question: Sweet, but didn’t I just read something about a plugin competition? And didn’t I read that right here on this blog?
Answer: Indeed you did. I was actually in the process of smoothing out the details for this competition, getting everything in order, when Mark announced the plugins competition 2.0. I emailed him immediately, somewhat frantically. But I feel like these two competitions differ from one another in all the right ways. Plugin developers are primarily concerned with PHP and scripting. This competition, as mentioned before, is purely about CSS and design. Put them together and you have everything that makes WordPress lovely.

Question: Word. But I blog on WordPress.com. Am I going to be left on the margins of the community yet again?
Answer: Not at all. The new version of the Sandbox will be available to blogs there soon (details to come). Furthermore, unless you like punching yourself in the face, you’ll probably want to install WordPress locally to do your designing. When the competition finishes and all the designs are available, you can rejoice in knowing you’ll be able to use the designs immediately (you’ll need the custom CSS upgrade, though).

Question: Good news indeed. Sign me up!
Answer: Sign yourself up, but not quite yet. All the details you could possibly wish for will be posted on www.plaintxt.org tomorrow, June 1, 2007. So go there tomorrow and you’ll find a lovely little post waiting to direct you to the competition blog.

Question: Well, I’m not going to submit a design, so perhaps there is something else I can do?
Answer: Indeed. If you have a design background or another appropriate qualification, you could possibly serve as a judge. Or you can simply purchase a sponsorship to show your support.

Question: Wait right there—purchase something? Uh, we’re talking about WordPress, right? So why would I do that?
Answer: First of all, you can support and encourage participation by helping raise the cash prize pot. If you’re active in the WordPress community or use WordPress, these designs can be of real benefit to you. Support our designers. Anyhow, there will be different levels of sponsorships, different prices, but basically you’ll be getting your link and/or image up on the competition blog for everyone to see. People will love and respect you.

Question: I could use some love and respect.
Answer: We all could, my friend. We all could.

So all the details will be posted tomorrow on www.plaintxt.org. Participants will have about two months create their designs and submit them. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Details, terms, etc., will all be available very soon. Until then. ;-D

I read this question in a comment and though I had an answer from my own personal preference, I think it would be really helpful for others to make this decision and consequently for theme developers to get a good feel for where and what they should concentrate on if there were some discussion on it.

I personally prefer one column themes with a minimal second column. Most information that is put on my sidebar(s) is extraneous and could be placed elsewhere. I have also found that some of that information deters from the original content of the blog. The landing page concept is nice for search engine traffic where extra links and information on the content might help you draw in the user to explore some more. However, the face of the blog is cleaner and chock full of good stuff to read with lesser distractions.

That being said, I have seen and read some really good blogs/sites that have made appropriate use of sidebar content including the venerable Slickdeals and the Wordpress Development blog.

Do you like one, two or three (or more) column themes and why?

I came across an article by Mark Boulton at A List Apart. He writes about the importance of micro and macro whitespace.

To put it simply, whitespace on a page is everything that isn’t the content. By content I mean text, images and other design elements.
Micro whitespace is the space between lines, characters and smaller elements on your page. Macro whitespace is between major elements, like blocks of content etc.
Micro whitespace plays the role in ensuring legibility and macro whitespace gives you the feeling of breathing room and cleanliness.

Before the popularity of CSS, most of the styling was with font, bold and italic tags. Most sites had standard font sizes (usually 12pt) and standard whitespacing.

Once CSS became popular, almost all design elements could be styled. Spacing between characters could be easily changed, as well as line spacing. Cross-browser and cross-platform incompatibility resulted in pages looking good in some browsers and extremely pathetic in others. Reduced line-height and font-spacing resulted in cramped text. Text became illegible and even good articles became a real pain to read.

Mark’s article brings to focus how whitespace can actually make a differnce. He cites two examples; one of Erik Spiekermann’s redesign of The Economist and the second of brand positioning while designing graphics.
He then goes on to explain the use of active and passive whitespace in a simple article with pictures and examples.

I think the article is a must read for both theme and graphic designers. I plan on implementing some of his suggestions in my designs as well as my websites.

Let me quote his closing paragraph:

Once you know how to design and manipulate the space outside, inside, and around your content, you’ll be able to give your readers a head start, position products more precisely, and perhaps even begin to see your own content in a new light.

The article »

pixer.us: online photo editor Upload your photo online and use this AJAX control panel to fix and modify your photos to your hearts’ content. The response is fast (for now). I modified one of our Jamaica pictures to test. I had some problem with the original (it looks like there are some logistic issues with the software not storing different pictures for different sessions). This might be really useful for bloggers that are editing their blogs or adding pictures where they do not have access to a good photo editor. The following picture was cropped, saturation tweaked, sharpened and randomly modified.

WP Comments built with Yahoo! UI Weird cool, highly AJAXed Wordpress commenting system built with Yahoo! UI. The experience is definitely worth a clickthrough though I am really not sure of the usability of many of the features. Looks more like a showcase for the Yahoo UI capabilities and the programming capabilities of the author than actual functional improvements. However, it seems to be very well accepted by the public and is definitely full of eye candy! Thanks Corante

Readability and High Contrast Designs Roger takes on the light text on dark background folks and opns up a can of worms. However, the reasoning is sounds and though the dislike and readability impairment might be limited, the bookmarklet and valuable discussion is worth the read. Do you like dark on light designs as much as light on dark?