SuperSatellite

Grayplicity v1.2 released!

// July 30th, 2008 // No Comments » // CSS, Web, Wordpress

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:

• Added style support for Increase Sociability Plugin (wrap with classes gp_ISDigg and gp_ISStmbl)
• Added style support for WordPress Related Posts Plugin
• Fixed bug with wp_title() that cause a » to appear before a post title in the header
• Added style support for wp-caption and wp-caption-text classes on images
• Hid the “Search for:” label in the search sidebar widget
• Gravatar support enabled in comments
• Trackback/Pingback detection in comments

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.

Polling Layout Preferences

// June 2nd, 2008 // 3 Comments » // Web, Wordpress

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.

Layout Preference

• Option 1 (left aligned/right sidebar)
• Option 2 (center aligned/right sidebar)

View Results

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Width Preference

• Fixed width
• Full (100%) width
• Flexible (proportional) width
• No Preference

View Results

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Grayplicity v1.1 released

// April 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // Web, Wordpress

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:

• Added styling for WordPress default calendar and search widgets
• Added search.php results template for is_search()
• Added 404.php template for is_404()
• Improvements to post styles
• Improved author comment style
• Corrected nested blockquotes
• Corrected font size issue with nested lists
• Removed default post image margins
• Dropcap First Letter plugin built in.
• Replaced transparent PNG background images with gifs for improved IE (Internet Explorer) 6 appearance

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.

Grayplicity Theme 1.0 released

// April 11th, 2008 // 6 Comments » // Wordpress

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.

Filling a WordPress Sandbox

// April 2nd, 2008 // 21 Comments » // CSS, Scripts, Web, XHTML

With the debut of my new theme, I have decided that I will go ahead and make it available as a downloadable theme for WordPress 2.5. This will take some time, as obviously I want to make sure everything works, and take out all the stuff that makes it specific to me. This also raised the question of what about people who do things that I don’t? Building a theme custom to one’s needs is one thing, but making something that is flexible to everyone’s is another.

To address this, the answer was simple. Development Sandbox. Easy enough. But the kicker was content. I needed a good base of different content, formatting elements, comments, categories, etc. On the WordPress Theme Viewer, they have just such a site set up. When you test themes, a bunch of test data is displayed in the theme so that you can see how different elements interact with it. But, to my surprise, there was no where that you could download this data at to load into your own site. No demo site database, no WordPress eXtended RSS (WXR) file floating around, and no one seemed to have an idea of where you could get it.

Some suggested copying my current site. Others just said to toss some junk in. Quasi-reasonable, both answers, but that’s not a good solution. I want something consistent that I can use over and over. Using my own site content isn’t a good idea, because I doubtlessly do things that others don’t, and don’t do things they do. Random content isn’t thought out enough, and might miss some elements that need to be tested. My solution was to create my own site, complete with seeded content to test formatting and display. It comes with pages and sub-pages, categories and sub-categories. There are comments, there are formatting elements. In short, most everything to make sure that you get all your formatting elements covered when designing a WordPress theme.

I also want to make this available to everyone, and will endeavor to keep it up and make it better as needs grow. Please, feel free to make comments or suggestions, and I’ll incorporate new things into it as they are made. I will also entertain the idea of creating an entire SQL file of a site, for those wishing to go that route rather than importing WXR files. WXR files are limited in what they can contain, so it won’t bring in things like blog names, descriptions, links, link categories, and other such things.

This is version 1.0 of the SuperSatellite WordPress Content Framework (WPCF for short). It is being made available as a WordPress eXtended RSS file, which you can import into your empty WordPress install through the Import page under Manage in WordPress 2.5. I created and tested this in 2.5, though it may work in other versions. If you try it with others, let me know if it does or does not work.

Changelog

• 1.0 (08.04.02)
  • Initial release