After letting Grayplicity simmer for a few months, I’ve packaged and released the latest update tonight. There’s several under the hood changes, some new plugin support, and added support for Gravatars (by request, with thanks to Brad) and Wordpress 2.6’s image captions. Feel free to download a copy and play around with it.
A look at some of the new features
Here’s the short list of changes:
You can grab the latest revision at the Grayplicity home. As always, I’m taking suggestions for improvements or changes. I’m still interested in building in AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) commenting sometime soon, and I’d like to add in some more plugins at some point. Unless there are some issues I’ve missed in the release, however, it’ll probably be a few months before another update comes down the pipes.
This is very short and simple. I got an idea for a new Wordpress layout, and I want to get some feedback as to your preferences for the structure, assuming you were either designing or reading a site based on the structure. Traditionally, we see a lot of left hand navigation elements on the left side of “normal” websites. Blogs tend to favor the right for sidebars. In this layout I’m plotting out, there will be an “aside” type element that I do not want juxtaposed against the sidebar area, but I also don’t want it hanging free against the right side of a center aligned page because I think it reduces the readability of it. So the options I crafted are as follows.
Option one is a left aligned page, with a left hand sidebar area with the asides floating on the right of the content. Option two is a center aligned page with a right hand sidebar area that allows the asides to come in on the left of the content. Both of these examples are optimized for 1024×768, but I am toying with the idea of making them full width, or possibly flexible width (though I generally find that harder to get “perfect”). Click either thumbnail to view an actual sample page. I welcome the opinions of both designers and random people alike. Also keep in mind, this is just for planning the basic wireframe of the site, it has nothing to do with how the final thing will actually look, from a “pretty” point of view.
Polls follow after examples.
Loading ... Loading ...After about a year, I am kicking Drupal to the curb. I fully recognize it is a robust, capable CMS (Content Management System). So are a lot of other systems. But it’s just not fitting me well. Sometimes I think CMS usage is as much about tastes as it is strict functionality (actually, I’m sure of it). Sure, a sweater might be warm, but if it’s ugly (with a big clown on the front), you might wear something a little lighter for the sake of having something more appealing (and less clowny). That’s where I am at. I’m tired of clowns and sweaters.
I originally adopted Drupal to run Penpedia when I launched the site for a few reasons. One, about that time I had started getting into Drupal just through the course of investigating different CMS’s. I did like that user accounts could have their fields customized. And I found a module that allowed for hand in hand single sign on authentication with the other half of the site, which ran MediaWiki. That also made it appealing. The longer I used it though, the more the rough edges started showing.
First, I didn’t want to start writing templates for a new system. This is in part because I already know how to template other systems like WordPress, e107, dotCMS, and a couple others. As a result, I start losing patience for learning others. Not a huge deal, because theming Drupal isn’t terribly hard, it was just that I didn’t want to. The theme I ultimately grabbed was only marginal, but I just never got motivated to write a custom one. And frankly, I’m a little ashamed of that, because the design of the site is not indicative of my abilities. But what did drive me nuts was the lack of any WYSIWYG editor built in. And the module that enabled the feature was disgustingly complicated, and caused a lot of clashing with the code stripper. The added steps of permissions and profiles for it to work right was just way beyond necessary. Which leads me to the next thing. The permission system didn’t please me. It didn’t work how I’d expect, and seemed far to complicated for what it was doing. That’s what I love about dotCMS, you can’t beat their permissioning system. Doing complex, and sometimes even more routine, tasks in the back end of Drupal generally felt like a power struggle between me and the code, and I loathed the idea of having to go in and tweak anything. And just to round it out, I’ve never liked the “node” concept.
But, just to remain clear, if it works for you, then great. It just hasn’t meshed well with me, and has actually discouraged me from developing the site better. That’s why I plan on changing things over there to Wordpress later this week. The MediaWiki portion will remain unchanged, though there might be some tweaks to login stuff, as I am investigating what needs to happen to maintain single sign on with the two. Plus, between here and there, I’ll only have one software package that I’ll need to worry about now, as opposed to two, which should encourage more development and activity on my part on the Penpedia site. I think this will be a move all for the better, and it should benefit the site well.
The moral of the story? There is a lot of value to standardizing on a CMS, and sticking with what you know. Even if a system isn’t perfect, if you are familiar with it and know its capabilities, I think that beats out picking a robust system that just doesn’t click for you.
Hot on the heals of the initial release of my Grayplicity Wordpress theme, I’m presenting you with v1.1. I wanted to get this one out quickly to address a couple small issues, and improve the usability of the theme. 1.2 will be a little further out probably, as I’d like to do some more AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) work with it, which will take more time to build in (commenting, integrated ThickBox, search, etc).
Full details and a download link can be found on the Grayplicity project page. You can find it by clicking that link, or by hitting the button at the top of the sidebar, or by going through the Projects page link in the header. Some of the changes for this version include:
If you are using 1.0, I recommend upgrading to this version. You shouldn’t notice any breakage, and will find several things have been improved. If you have questions related to this release, feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me (though comments can benefit everyone and are encouraged). Also, I will try to answer questions regarding the theme as they come in. If something looks out of whack, or you want to know why something won’t display properly, I will attempt to help. Some tweaks were made for 1.1 based on these kinds of questions.
Okay, the time has come. I am ready to release the first version of Grayplicity out into the wild. I even managed to release it right on time when I said I would, too! Grayplicity is the public release version of the theme that I am using on my blog here. I decided that I wanted to try my hand at making it into something everyone could use, if so inclined. This theme should have no problem working between Wordpress 2.3.3 and 2.5.
Feel free to leave me comments and feedback on it. Also please point out bugs. I will use all the feedback to improve and build a better theme. I’m sure a lot of you will be trying things I won’t have even thought of. I plan on adding support for a lot more of the more popular plugins, as well as building in some neat new features.
Also, if you download it and decide that it is something you’ll stick with, let me know. I’m curious how people will put it to use, and I’ll be sure to showcase the best ones on the theme’s page. You can get to it by clicking that big button on top of my sidebar or by going through the “Projects” page.
If you want to test it out, you might like to give it a run with my Wordpress Content Framework, which is designed to serve as a test bed for theme and site development. You can also use the WPCF when designing your own themes.
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