March 11th, 2010
I love reading Smashing Magazine as it is extremely helpful for an aspiring graphic designer slash web developer. When they were advertising the release of their book Smashing Book, I pre-ordered right away. I had great hopes and they sure delivered a book chock full of ideas, concepts and smashing content.
The Good
As always from the writers, content is key. This book touches upon most topics that are relevant for any designer focused on the web as its medium. The topics range from taking full advantage of CSS for layouts to typography options as well as color theory. It covers on the fundamentals of user interface design and usability concerns that may not be something we may care as much as typical graphic artists.
Besides the graphical topics it covers, the book also covers the... Continue Reading...
Tags: smashing book, smashing magazine, web design
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February 8th, 2010
Default Wordpress allows you to display recent posts and recent comments through a widget. However, as I develop my own theme, I want to be able to customize as much as possible without using a widget in my sidebar at all.
The problem is, displaying recent posts and recent comments is not as simple as just using a Wordpress template tag found in Wordpress Codex. Instead, you will need to get creative and create a bit of custom code to grab the data from the database.
There are definitely some common code snippets used for Wordpress but I found the ability to control and display recent posts and recent comments to be what I need most.
Displaying Most Recent Posts
There are several ways to display the most recent posts from just using the wp_get_archives tag to query_posts tag which involves... Continue Reading...
Tags: common code, recent comments, recent posts, Wordpress
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February 8th, 2010
It is always nice to add custom features to enhance the user experience. One of these enhancements is to add the an author’s bio information to an article he or she has written. This is particularly useful because when reading a good article the user may be inclined to learn more about the author.
A quick snippet of the author’s information can help users relate to the author as well as help the author promote himself or herself.
Using the_author_meta tag to grab information
In Wordpress, each registered user can fill out information about themselves in their profile. This is found in the Dashboard under Users -> Your Profile. Some of the meta information fields that are available by default are the following:
Username
First name
Last name
Nickname
Email
Website
AIM
Yahoo... Continue Reading...
Tags: adding author bio to posts, Wordpress
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February 8th, 2010
The sidebar for Wordpress is typically where the archive, categories and other items are listed on your front page. However, as your categories and numbers of posts in the archive grow, so does the list; resulting in a really long sidebar. Having a long sidebar can take up precious onscreen real estate. It can also be a distraction to the user.
Tabbed Menu as the Solution
In looking how to save some onscreen real estate as well as providing a more slick interface for users to navigate for content on the site, designers can choose to create a tabbed menu.
In searching the internet, there were many solutions. There are actually a couple of specific plugins for Wordpress. Although, it is easier to use a plugin, the widget based style is less customizable for my liking.
I found several... Continue Reading...
Tags: sidebar tabs, tabbed menu, Wordpress
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February 8th, 2010
If your running Wordpress, you’ll know that if you want to log into the admin dashboard, you have to type in the URL for the login page. This can be inconvenient if you set up a social website where you want users to be able to login.
Sure, a link to the login page can be done, but that requires one extra click and loading of the page.
WPDesigner has a great snippet of code to add to your theme so users can login from the front page.
The Code
You can download the code from WPDesigner. But here is a quick preview of the code:
<li>
<?php global $user_ID, $user_identity, $user_level ?>
<?php if ( $user_ID ) : ?>
<h2>Control panel</h2>
<ul>
<li>Identified as <strong><?php echo $user_identity ?></strong>.
<ul>
<li><a... Continue Reading...
Tags: login form, Wordpress
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