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How to add an extra sidebar
WordPress Coding & Design Say your theme only has one sidebar.php and you want to have a different sidebar on your index then on your archives page. Adding extra sidebars is surprisingly easy and this is how to do it. First we’ll create the sidebars. You can copy your current sidebar file and rename it to something like sidebar_two or sidebar_archives, almost anything you want really. If you decide to create it from scratch and want to maintain the widgets ...
Continue readingInspiration: Elements of Design
Blogging Sometimes, designing that perfect calendar or creating headline bliss can be exhausting. I know, we make it look easy, but the truth is we aren’t always able to magically pull out a solution on the first pass. Often great designs involve research, time, and inspiration. Christian Watson has put together an amazing compendium that can save you time researching and finding inspiration for elements of your designs. The aptly names Elements of ...
Continue readingCustom Fields
WordPress Coding & Design I am working on a new site for an online publication From My Bottom Step and I wanted to be able to allow authors to display external links from the post and additional resources in the sidebar or the footer of the post like some major newspaper sites do. To do so I enlisted them help of a little used wordpress feature, custom fields. The issue however was that I wanted it to be brain dead simple for authors to use. I didn’t want them to ...
Continue readingInspiration: Ryan Ford.
Design & Coding Like most kids in High School, I had no idea what I wanted to do after graduation. I knew through Mr. Stanley's grade ten computer class I enjoyed putting together websites, but had no idea how to make that into a career. Neither did the teachers or guidance staff for that matter, suggesting I go into computer programing courses and spend an extra year retaking a higher level of math to qualify. One teacher even told my mother that I'd never ...
Continue readingLink Block Hover Effect
CSS It’s a fairly common trick used nowadays, a block of text with a title and some other information that acts as a link while the only thing that looks like a link in the block is the title. It doesn’t require any fancy tricks even, but it’s probably not the most semantic bit of code. Check out the demo here. The key is simply wrapping the entire block in the link, and then styling the rest of the content to not look like a link. ...
Continue readingReduce your code.
Design & Coding Complex designs are quite often a mess of div’s and span’s, it’s not surprising some people are sticking to tables, but unless they have a time machine tables are not the answer, remember it’s CSS or die! In January I told you to lose the fat in visual clutter and plug-ins, now in the second half of 2008 we’ll talk about trimming to create a more semantic, SEO friendly, easily maintainable, clean and lean website ...
Continue readingUse CSS to Style Link Types.
CSS Ever wanted to style your links to represent the type of content it links too without having to add a class to each link? Well I’m here again to save the day with a no brainier solution. This is quick and simple so I’ll get right too it. Say you want to have all links to PDF’s have a PDF icon next to it, letting users know they are about to have their browser stall for a few seconds as the file loads. Well all you need to do is ...
Continue readingFancy Forms
CSS Forms can be a bit of a pain to style, in the old days tables were the method of choice to align everything just right, but this is the future; CSS OR DIE! P.Diddy will come to your home and kill you if you use tables for presentational markup. So in order to prevent a Diddy disaster here is some helpful information, I accept thanks for saving your lives in cash and gifts off my Amazon wish list.
Continue readingColumns dropping off
CSS I've talked about using grids in designing websites previously, aligning your elements to a formula to create consistency and harmony. This isn't hard to integrate into your design process, but issues can pop up in putting the layout to code; one such problem is columns dropping off.
Continue readingAccessibility Checklist
Design & Coding Last week Aaron Cannon, a web developer and accessibility consultant who is blind, wrote his version of an accessibility checklist. That is not to say that when followed you will have a 100% accessible site, but it’s a great guide to keep in mind when tackling a new design, and a lot of the items are just good semantics. Here are a few of the items from the list. Make sure headings use <h1>, rather then a <p> or <div> ...
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