May 2005 – Urban Giraffe

A theme to call my own

So after all the articles about creating themes I finally got round to finishing my own. After much pulling of hair I also made it work in Internet Explorer. Really, the pain that browser puts people through is unreal. Roll on IE7.

Anyway, I’ve tried to rearrange the layout so as to make it not look like Kubrick. The front page has a full-width lead article, followed by three smaller articles, and finished off with a list of titles. A single page post uses the full-width of the page. This was all designed to give maximum space for long articles. The CSS is also print-friendly.

The comments have been filtered so all ‘real’ comments are grouped separately from pings and trackbacks. A little bit of JavaScript hides the pings until clicked open. I think having many pings on a page really puts people off from commenting, not to mention looks really ugly.

I’d really appreciate any feedback, especially with regards bugs and problems. I’ve tested it in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera, so I hope this means it will carry through to Mac browsers.

Oh, and there’s a giraffe at last!

Printable theme guide

A lot of people have asked for a printable version of my WordPress theme dissection and so I’ve been beavering away and have now released a PDF. This has been fully revised and expanded, and weighs-in at just over 1MB.

In a further fit of productivity I’ve also made a version available to buy from the online publisher Lulu. The guide is the same, so you can download the PDF and print it out yourself, but you also have the option of ordering a professionally printed and bound copy. As more of an incentive, the Lulu version has an extra chapter including my guide to installing WordPress on your own computer, as well as extra bookish things such as content pages etc. There’s also a full-colour durable cover – just like a real book!

Full details of this, and the PDF, can be found in the WordPress theme guide section.

Cleaning the stairs

So the old Czech lady who cleans the stairs accosted me today. Normally when we meet in the communal areas she nods and says a polite Dobry Den, and I do the same in return. This time she waved a piece of paper and planted a pen in my hand. I peered at the paper in the hope of picking out some recognizable words, but it seemed to be a table with different numbers and very little else.

Not knowing a whole lot of Czech I tried to tell her I didn’t know what this was… ne Česky, ne Česky! She spoke some more and I told her in English that I had no idea what she wanted me to do. She then laughed and I went to get my lunch.

I’ve been trying to decide if she wanted me to sponsor her, or if she wanted a contact number. Ignorance may be bliss but mostly it’s just not having a clue.

Dissection of a WordPress theme: Part 4

Translation:

Italiano

Resources:

In previous guides we have concentrated on the building blocks of a WordPress theme. A basic design structure has been defined, followed by enclosing header and footer elements, and finished off with a navigational panel. While important aspects of any blog, they are secondary to its main purpose: the content.

In this fourth and final part we carefully dissect the process of taking content from WordPress and arranging it on screen. Attention is paid to the alternative methods of grouping this information, from the multiple posts of the front page, to search results and archives.

We will look at how WordPress distributes responsibility for this work, and how everything is tied together with the all-seeing all-knowing construct known as ‘The Loop’.

By the end of this guide we should have a fully working theme and enough WordPress experience and knowledge to extend our theme beyond the basic design presented here.

Politically incorrect fun – Woman Of The Year

I watched several movies over the weekend, courtesy of my flat mate making a bumper trip to the video rental store. His tastes could easily be described as eclectic – old romance, sci-fi, and Benny Hill are not an average choice.

Movie one was Woman Of The Year. This is a very old black and white movie starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn and it falls squarely in the ‘romantic comedy’ category. Normally I make a quick retreat from such movies, but this was a lot of fun and certainly a lot better than most modern varieties.

What was particularly curious is how much society has changed with regards attitudes towards women. The basic premise of the story is that Hepburn is a modern wonder-woman; strong, intelligent, and beautiful. She speaks several languages, knows many important political figures, and soon wins the prize for ‘Woman of the year’. At the same time she meets Spencer Tracy and before long they get married. However, because of her busy life things start falling apart. She tries to patch it together by adopting an orphan boy, but it’s quickly apparent she has no time for him.

Japanese translation

There’s a great Japanese translation of the WordPress theme dissection (part one), written by Tai over at Tekapo. There’s a link directly from the article.

Nice work Tai, and thanks for the translation!

A change of host

I’ve decided to change my hosting company.

I am prepared for a lot of pain and suffering, but so far it’s going rather smoothly. This wasn’t some well thought out decision, but rather a fit of activity after becoming frustrated with the averageness of GoDaddy, my current host.

Finding a decent host is a real chore, and I came to this conclusion pretty soon the first time round. The internet is flooded with copy-cat hosting companies who are mostly resellers that buy bandwidth from real companies. Even their websites all look the same, with identical prices, identical features, and identical hidden setup fees. This makes me both weary and wary.

This is the internet so you’d think it would be easy to find a decent website with reviews of the companies. But no. Most of the companies have tied Google up in loops with their link farms. A search for ‘web host review‘ returns an immense number of fake review sites, each ranking the same hosting companies. It’s quite a sickening misuse of the internet. I shall refer to this collective as The Many.