Blog Archives
To ID or not to ID.
CSS The diffrence between an ID and Class was something I was largely ignorant too for some time at the beginning of my jumping onto the CSS bandwagon and abandoning tables for layouts. I used them both, probably incorrectly, but stuck with class for most of my layouts. It took a while before I even bothered to inquire as to what the diffrence was between id and class, and lucky for you I’m going to share that morsel of knowledge. ID, using ...
Continue readingCastroller Identity Development
Design & Coding CastRoller is an online podcast subscription tool. Just add one personalized feed to your desktop application and let CastRoller do all of the work. When you want to subscribe to a new podcast, just add it to CastRoller. Your personalized feed will be updated to automatically contain the latest episodes from all of your favorite podcasts. I took on the project to give CastRoller a complete visual overhaul, and as usual I started with the ...
Continue readingPromote your Design
Design & Coding So you’ve put in some hard time redesigning your blog and it looks fancy as all hell. But that doesn’t matter much if you don’t get the props you deserve. A redesign is a great opportunity to get more eyeballs to your site, and one of the easiest ways of doing that is by getting recognized in design galleries. For wordpress powered blogs you might want to try We Love WordPress. In the last two weeks they have accounted for over ...
Continue readingDesign Grid
Design & Coding Grid based design has become an emerging trend for web design in the last year, and it’s continuing to gain momentum. While it’s still somewhat of a mystery to a good portion of the community, it’s something that has been around since before the printed word. Geometry and symmetry are an important aspect through many design related disciplines, and is the most evident in classical greco roman architecture, and the foundation of print ...
Continue readingAdd some pop!
CSS If your designing a theme with a dedicated column to the date stamp, you can take back some of that space under it and add a unique pop to your design. In the image to the right the date column is a span and the content of the article is in a div to the right of it. Because of the way it is layed out, using a span and then floating the content next to it, you have the ability to float things outside of the content and under the date stamp as ...
Continue readingFancy Pull Quotes.
CSS A pull quote is a quoted snippet from an associated article that is used to highlight a bit of the post. Pull quotes are the most effective element for adding improved scanability to your text, and by extension the perception of your sites usefulness. Here’s the basics. First, create a new class in your themes style sheet, call it .quote. This is the base of how your pull quotes will be formatted and positioned. Specify whether you want it ...
Continue readingPlugin: Syntax Highlight.
WordPress Plugins If you’ve ever tried to include a snippet of code in your post you might have run into a common problem where WordPress decides to work it’s magic and format your code into something pretty unusable for demonstration purposes. You might have tried to code tag, but that doesn’t help much either. One solution is to run your post through a tool to convert the code into something WordPress won’t modify. This is what I used in ...
Continue readingDynamic Menu
Design & Coding Another element in the sidebar of my portfolios new blog design is a menu that changes what it displays depending on which one you click. So when you are on the Archive page the archive link changes state to display where you currently are, and when you are on the News page the subcategories are displayed below the link. Here’s what I threw together. This displays the subcategory when in the News category, and highlights the News link. ...
Continue readingEasy Link Blog.
Blogging In the process of redesigning my portfolio I decided to upgrade how I presented links to select articles here at blogging tips. Previously it was a static and simple list of links off the to the side, but I wanted to simplify the addition of new article links and have them included in my RSS feed. I looked at a few plugins for asides and link blogs, but I chose a much simpler and convenient method, but If you are not using FeedBurner then this ...
Continue readingInterview with Keith and The Girl.
Podcasting A few weeks ago I briefly talked about podcasts and the benefits of the medium, and Andy McDonald also wrote two articles on podcasting in a series on the technical details of putting together your own. But what does it take to make it big? “You have to take it seriously.” explains Keith Malley of Keith and the Girl, one of the most popular and successful podcasts by any standard. “If you say you’re putting out a show ...
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