Lorelle on WordPress » WordPress Themes

Stripped Down Naked to Honor Web Designers and Developers

Lorelle VanFossen — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 04:00:13 +0000

In honor of April 9, 2008, as CSS Naked Day, my blog is going naked. I discussed this a few days ago with details on how to strip naked your blog if you would like to join in the celebrations.

By going naked, my blog stands with thousands of others who recognize and honor the hard work of web design. I honor not just those who make our blogs and sites pretty, but those who set the those who set the standards we use on the web to make our sites pretty, usable, and accessible.

I honor the web designers who “walk the walk” and volunteer their time to ensure those standards grow with the web not against. I honor web browser developers who understand the need for standards and thus work with them, also not against them, for our web browsing pleasure, helping designers design well and avoid all the hacks and customizations on a per-browser basis.

I honor the founders of the web, the great minds who looked into the future and said, “Everyone must have access to this.” They meant everyone. Every person on any computer using any method to access the web. In their minds, they wanted to have people on different computer operating systems be able to share data. Today, this has stretched to include access for the blind and visually impaired, disabled, deaf, Mac user, Windows user, Linus user, cell phone, web TV, big screen, little screen, all the various methods the web is accessed so the data can flow both ways with ease.

I also honor those who give so much of their creativity to the WordPress Community, while setting a standard in web design around the world. Thank you to all who understand that a free WordPress Theme is a resume. A business card. A portfolio of your work. By giving, you are showing the world what you are capable of. It’s a way to give back to the WordPress Community which gives so much of its time to volunteering to support WordPress through their work on WordPress Plugins, donating and writing articles for the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, and volunteering their time in the WordPress.com Forums and WordPress Support Forums to help others.

For those who make a living off of the free WordPress blogging platform, I honor you for giving back to that which helps you pay your rent or mortgage. The WordPress Community is a fantastic free school of education for coders, programmers, designers, writers, and hackers. Thank you for volunteering your time and skills towards the improvement of WordPress and WordPress development.

Honoring - and Challenging - Web Developers to Break the Last Barrier

In honor of celebrating the web designers, I also honor those who are working behind the scenes to break the last major barrier on the web: language. This is the year, folks, that we have to start breaking the language barrier to make the web truly accessible by all.

Sure, there are translation programs online. They are improving in machine translations, but they are in the wrong place. It takes too much work to copy the URL or page content and take it to another page in order to generate the translation. Who wants to bother with that much fuss?

Putting the pressure on websites and blogs to provide machine or human translations of their content is also a time waster. It puts the onus on the web owner, consuming bandwidth, database, and server access to provide translations. They do it because they know the future and want to reach out to everyone across the language divide, but we can do better. And we can do it now.

I call out to web browser developers to start working on putting language translation - instant language translation - into the web browser. Yes, it will consume resources, weight down the program, but where there is a will, there is a way. No matter what you may think today, the language barrier must come down. I visualize Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Matt Mullenweg standing at the virtual web wall, each picking up a piece of stone, and shouting, “Browser Developers, tear down this wall!” Okay, so maybe not them, but it has to happen. Why can’t they be among the first to proclaim the wall must come down?

I want to know what Sing Hio has to say in Japan on her blog. I want to read what Paulo is doing in Brazil at his favorite dance club. I want to read about the tough day Boris had at school in St. Petersburg. I want to share the love of a good book across the languages with Angelo in Mexico City. Why can’t I? Why should I be restricted by a language not my own? Why should we make them learn our language in order to communicate?

We must break down the final barriers on the web. We’ve crossed the data barriers. We’ve embraced web standards for design. We’ve put the peer in social networking. Now it’s time to truly cross the final frontier.

Consider yourself challenged.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Strip Down Your Blog: CSS Naked Day

Lorelle VanFossen — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:00:31 +0000

Get ready to go naked. On April 9th, 2008, hundreds, possibly thousands, of blogs and websites will go naked in honor of CSS Naked Day. Join fellow WordPress bloggers in honoring web designers and WordPress Theme builders by going naked.

This is the third year of the annual CSS Naked Day which honors web design and designers around the world who help make our websites and blogs look “pretty” to the eye while still being totally functional under the hood. Dustin Diaz wanted to give the web world an opportunity to remind everyone of the benefits of CSS web page design. By removing the stylesheet for the day, the world would see naked web pages, giving a little more appreciation for the skills of web page designers.

As explained yesterday in the Blog Herald announcement of CSS Naked Day, this is also an opportunity to showcase how usable and accessible your web page structure is even without the pretty, reminding the world that it is the law that your website must accessible by everyone using any method to access your blog.

Make Your WordPress Blog Naked

Going naked is easy for WordPress blogs. In Lorelle is Naked, I explained the various options last year on how to turn off your blog’s stylesheet using WordPress Plugins with WordPress Naked Day Plugin for all WordPress versions, CSS Naked Day WordPress Plugin for pre-WordPress 2x blogs, the Naked Day PHP Function script for non-WordPress and PHP driven blogs, do it manually by renaming your blog’s stylesheet for the day, or removing the stylesheet temporarily on WordPress.com blogs.

Recent versions of WordPress will automatically reset to the Default WordPress Theme if no Theme is detected, which means changing the style.css file will revert your Theme to the Default/Kubrick style. To override this redirection, you must use the WordPress Naked Day Plugin or create a separate Theme that has no styles in the stylesheet, which I’ve prepared just for this event.

I have stripped down the styles in the Default WordPress Theme for current versions of WordPress and pre-WordPress 2.1 versions which changed some of the sidebar tags.

Unzip and upload the Theme version of choice to your themes directory.
- Default Blank WordPress Theme for current versions of WordPress for CSS Naked Day (zip)
- Default Blank WordPress Theme for CSS Naked Day (Pre-WordPress 2.1) (zip)
Activate the Theme through the Presentation or Design panel.
Switch back to your regularly scheduled WordPress Theme on April 10.

For those on WordPress.com, you can also participate if you are using the Sandbox WordPress Theme with the WordPress.com CSS Extra feature.

From the WordPress Administration Panels, go to Presentation > Edit CSS.
Cut ALL of the styles from your custom stylesheet and paste them into a text file. Save it with a name you will remember in a very safe place, leaving a blank stylesheet.
Choose the option: Start from scratch and just use this to create a blank stylesheet.
Click Save Stylesheet.
View your WordPress.com blog and all the design elements will be gone. The layout structure will remain but it will be “naked”.

Reverse the process to restore your Sandbox Theme on April 10.

Be sure and sign up for the CSS Naked Day so your blog will be celebrated as one of those honoring web design and designers. Last year, almost 2,000 sites signed up for CSS Naked Day. So far, the list is over 400. Let your naked stance join with others on April 9.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Are You Ready and Willing for CSS3?

Lorelle VanFossen — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:48:27 +0000

Are you ready for the changes in web page design that will come with the new version of Cascading Stylesheets known as CSS3?

In A Refreshed Design for 2008 by Don’t Trust This Guy, I found a glimpse of some of the new CSS3 features and possibilities including multiple background images and CSS drop shadows.

One of the interesting proposals that may be making its way into the final CSS3 version is the grid. You can see visual examples of the technique and code from the W3 on the CSS3 Grid technique, and what it does is turn your web design into a newspaper/magazine style format. You start reading on column one, scrolling down, then have to scroll up to continue reading in column two, scroll down, then scroll up to continue reading the article in column three, and so on.

That’s a lot of scrolling up and down. I’m still teaching people how to use the scroll wheel and thumb buttons on their mouse, so what do you think this is going to do to your eyes and fingers scrolling up and down and up and down and…you get the picture.

While I think the grid system is excellent for precision design elements, hearkening back to the one joy in table-based designs - putting it EXACTLY where you wanted it to stay - I’m not a fan of any up and down scrolling. It’s bad enough that the header art and area keeps getting bigger and bigger, requiring one to three scroll downs (see Matt Mullenweg) just to get to the content. I see this technique as valuable for some sites who want to narrow the width of the column and keep as much content as possible above the scrolling fold, but I see a lot of abuse on the user, too. This should prove interesting, and increase the wear and tear on your scrolling finger.

You can follow some of the improvements and changes in the CSS3 Roadmap while you are waiting for your browser to embrace CSS3, and here are some other glimpses at what’s coming in CSS3:

Yeah, But What About the Browsers?

In 2008: The Year Of The Layout Engine from the CSS3.info blog, they report on whether or not the new technology that will come with CSS3 will be viewable in most web browsers:

I believe that 2008 will be notable for the second salvo in the browser wars, and although previous combatant Netscape is out of action, we now have a four-way battle on our hands. In fact, ‘browser wars’ may not be the best description any longer; perhaps ‘layout engine wars’ is a more accurate description. With all four major engines releasing new versions, it’s going to be exciting to watch.

…During the last browser war it was the developers and users who lost out, as websites were built to favour one browser over another or involved double the work to be compatible with both. This time, however, standards are a well-developed core around which the battle rotates; so whoever loses, we all win.

The latter is quite a promise.

There are two major issues here. First, the web browser developers have to embrace the new standards and design elements. And they have to do it fast in order to jump on the CSS3 bandwagon. Waiting two to four years after the fact isn’t good and bad business practice.

The second more important issue is whether or not you are willing to upgrade your browser for the new CSS3 benefits.

I didn’t “upgrade” to Internet Explorer 7 mostly because I don’t use it. I have access to it for testing web designs along with other browsers, but I don’t use IE any more. It doesn’t give me the power I want in my web browser. After watching it take over whole computer systems and failing, repeatedly, in the installation, and watching them remove it and return to an earlier version, IE lost even more luster for me.

Are you really willing to upgrade Internet Explorer or move to a new browser to embrace CSS3? Would it mean that much to you?

The web browser is your best friend and tool when blogging so make sure it works for you and you work for it.

Microformats

Along with the improvements in the upcoming release of CSS3, Microformats are the next generation in communicating and interacting with your readers and clients via your blog’s design.

Otto of Nothing to See Here wrote a brilliant post as a guest blogger here on Microformats and WordPress Themes, helping us understand better how to incorporate microformats into your WordPress Theme and blog.

In the article by Don’t Trust This Guy, he announces that in addition to CSS3 techniques, he is also adding microformats and gives a couple examples of the power of their use.

I see this coming year as a huge one for improvements in web page design and development, but we have to get the web browsers to keep up with the changes. And we, ourselves, have to keep up with the upgrades of our browsers so we can enjoy the improvements.

Are you ready?

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Access Requested to the WordPress Theme Viewer

Lorelle VanFossen — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 23:05:37 +0000

Update December 11, 2007: Matt Mullenweg offered updated news on the WordPress Theme Viewer saying:

Just wanted to do a quick update for those wondering when you’ll be able to add new themes or update existing ones here in the directory. We’ve been working very hard on a new Subversion-backed database for themes that will allow you to upload themes as you did before, as a plain ZIP file, and we’re transparently check it into SVN so changes can be tracked just like we do for WordPress development.

Unfortunately, I can’t get the site to load, but this came in through the WordPress Theme Viewer Blog Feed, therefore, can’t read the rest of the announcement.

In “WordPress Theme Viewer Still Crippled“, Nathan Rice reminds us that the WordPress Theme Viewer is still not open to WordPress Theme designers to allow them to upgrade their WordPress Themes:

It’s been 5 months since WordPress decided to close access to theme designers uploading and updating their themes on the official WordPress Theme Viewer, and the longer it stays closed, the worse the entire situation gets for WordPress Theme users and designers.

…We NEED access to this site in order to update our themes!

The lack of access to the WordPress Theme Viewer not only hurts my own reputation, but it hurts the users too and could potentially be dangerous! Think about it…

Nathan points out very good reasons why it is critical to open access to the WordPress Theme Viewer so WordPress Theme authors and designers, the most important of which is the reputation of the quality and integrity of the Themes on the WordPress Theme Viewer.

His words echo those I’ve heard from many frustrated WordPress Theme designers over the past few months.

The main reason the WordPress Theme Viewer access was closed down was for a major cleaning of the Theme Viewer, removing Themes with spammy ad links, copyright violations, and duplicate Theme designs. The WordPress Community let the developers know that they didn’t want junk in the “official” WordPress Theme service, and they complied.

Now, five months have passed without access to update their Themes and Theme authors are frustrated that the integrity desired of the WordPress Theme Viewer is lacking as users continue to download buggy and vulnerable Themes. Those who upgraded are stuck with Themes that aren’t WordPress 2.3 compliant. WordPress 2.4 is due out next month, which may include more changes to WordPress Themes, making many of the Themes on the Theme Viewer even more obsolete.

This hurts users and spoils designer’s reputations. It also overwhelms the Support Forums.

If WordPress is to offer an “official” site for WordPress Themes, it must do so in a way that protects the user and the Theme designer equally. Hopefully, access will be restored soon and designers will be able to update their Themes.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

WordPress.com Marketplace and The Theme Debate

Lorelle VanFossen — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:05:34 +0000

Last week, Matt Mullenweg made public his idea on creating a WordPress.com Marketplace to add more options to WordPress.com bloggers for a fee, especially meeting the demands of so many for more, more, and more.

Among the proposals under consideration, and I stress that, since this is not a done deal but an idea, is the selling of Premium WordPress Themes to WordPress.com bloggers. In Matt’s post, he comes up with a 50-50 split as an example, which has outraged many, and created a lot of speculation and false accusations.

I’d like to point out something that appears to be overlooked from Matt’s post:

WP.com Marketplace Idea

At WordCamp Argentina yesterday I talked about an upcoming feature for WordPress.com, a theme marketplace…

Right now WordPress.com is a little bit like a clothing store with only XXL men’s pink ponchos available — not a lot of selection. We’d like to offer more products, hence the idea of a theme marketplace.

…There are some obvious things that need to be in place, and probably a few we haven’t thought of yet.

…At the end of the day, it’s just a market. I’m sure styles, pricing strategies, and more will develop over time.

To further support the idea, and all of its ramifications, Matt does a Marketplace Followup in which he says:

It’s still impossible to know for certain, though, and I appreciate that our launch partners are taking a risk that they might create a theme and not sell a single one, and the whole thing might tank. If it goes well, though, I fully expect there to be thousands of themes in the system by this time next year, and the people in early will have a significant advantage, much like app developers did on Facebook.

Does this sound like a done deal? The idea of a WordPress.com Marketplace is in the works, and has been for a long time, offering WordPress.com bloggers all kinds of products and services, including t-shirts, CSS Extras (allowing customization of your own WordPress.com blog), extra storage space, VIP hosting, and soon may include bumper stickers and coffee mugs, and “premium” Themes, all wrapped up in a neat “store”. Hey, I want a coffee mug!

For two years, rumors have also been flying to come up with a way of charging WordPress.com users for the right to put ads on their blogs and make money with their free blogs for a small fee. The bloggers would make money, the advertisers would make money, and so would WordPress.com, but it’s a delicate road to walk, so right now, it’s still rumors. What isn’t a rumor is that soon ads that current appear randomly on some WordPress.com blogs will be able to be turned on or off for a fee so your blog can remain ad free if you want.

As Matt said, it’s just a market, and they are making marketing decisions, but moving slowly and carefully, asking for input and feedback before jumping too drastically into something that will be hard to back out of.

These are ideas put out on the table and Matt and the WordPress.com team is looking for your input, suggestions, feedback, and other ideas. Not many businesses ask their customers and potential customers what they think before preceding with their business decisions. Matt Mullenweg and WordPress has a reputation for talking, listening, before deciding, and then admitting when they screw up.

In April 2007, Matt Mullenweg asked the WordPress Community to vote idea of whether or not to include “sponsored” Themes in the “official” WordPress Theme directories and lists. The response was overwhelming, with the majority of users furious about finding hidden links, ads, and hidden and unwanted code in WordPress Themes without disclosure. After a lot of listening and debate, in July 2007, Mark Ghosh on Weblog Tools Collection declared that he would no longer feature sponsored WordPress Themes, and Matt Mullenweg has made the WordPress policy on sponsored WordPress Themes final. He listened to what users, designers, and those who support WordPress in so many ways had to say, and made a decision to protect users from those who abused free WordPress Themes, at least from within the bounds of what WordPress could control. There are still many WordPress Themes offered all over the web with undisclosed links and code that many describe as malicious and clearly unwanted, so business for these folks continues on. They just aren’t included in the “official” WordPress lists.

Now, those web designers who want to make money off their WordPress Themes without the need for underhanded techniques or finding sponsors have another chance to do so. And those who want to continue using their WordPress Themes as marketing tools to promote their skills by offering their Theme designs for free, can also continue to do so.

The idea is out there, and Matt and his team are listening. Let them know what you think about this, but please, think it through before offering your opinion. There are a lot of sides to the issue worth considering.

Selling WordPress Themes on WordPress.com

The focus in the current debate and discussion seems to be not around the idea and offering helpful comments and recommendations on the Marketplace concept, but on the top-of-his-head mention of a 50-50 split for Theme designers and WordPress.com, which Matt then qualifies with the fact that he’s keeping numbers simple and “you can plug in different numbers and assumptions there and it’s pretty easy to see how this could be big for designers.”

Is the 50-50 split a done deal? Again, this is an idea that has just been made public. With the feedback, the numbers may change, especially as the amount of work that goes into this process on both sides is explored and uncovered. Without facts on the ground, who knows if 50-50 is fair or 30-70?

I also don’t see why the Marketplace has to be only limited to WordPress.com users. In time, I could see it expanding to include any WordPress user access to some fun schwag and Themes. Who knows where this could lead?

I’m not taking sides on this, as I see so much from all perspectives, so here is a little of what I see.

Benefiting WordPress Theme Designers

For Theme Designers, they would benefit by not having to work so hard to promote their own wares. Currently, besides now having a shadow of suspicion on most WordPress Themes because of the abuse by only a few, Theme designers have to submit their Themes to multiple directories, sites, and blogs for publicity. They have to work hard to convince the public of the quality and integrity of their work in order to build their reputation as a web designer. They are competing with thousands of others, not a select few.

With association with WordPress.com, there is a new respect and assumption of integrity that cannot be easily bought nor earned, and then, by only a select few. Theme designers would benefit from less work, time, and effort promoting their Themes, thus their web design services, which, for most, is the end goal, right? I’m sure they would rather be earning money for their services than spending all their time handing out and promoting their WordPress Themes.

The publicity that may come from being one of the “top paid WordPress Themes” might do wonders for your career, too, which is a metric currently not tracked well. What if a Theme accepted into WordPress.com would get a small badge that says “WordPress.com Approved” or something that could be used on the Theme outside of WordPress.com. That might be a neat seal of approval that would speak loudly. Worth a thought.

The downside?

If the 50-50 split holds, then yes, there would be a loss in income. Offset that by the less time and effort the designer might spend in promoting their Themes, and maybe this is a good thing. Maybe a better split could be arranged, or a sliding scale. This is still up for discussion and we need more facts.

Are there other downsides to this plan for WordPress Theme designers? Since they can sell their Themes after inclusion in WordPress.com’s Marketplace, is there really a downside besides the money issue?

WordPress.com Also Needs to Benefit

WordPress.com would benefit by offering unique and interesting Themes to their users, and get better quality Themes to offer. WordPress.com users would benefit, too, getting access to whatever defines a “premium” Theme over a not premium Theme.

Currently, the process every WordPress Theme goes through before inclusion in the WordPress.com offerings is fairly intense and time consuming as every bit of code is inspected and checked. Not just for sponsored links or criminal activity, but all the code elements to ensure that the Theme will work within the latest version of WordPress and the WordPress.com structure and usage. It is also the responsibility of WordPress.com to keep all these Themes updated and maintained during all of the updates to its code base. That’s a lot of work, just ask Andy Skelton. WordPress.com has to pay people to do this, so they deserve compensation, too.

Before I pass judgment on the suggestions Matt put forth, I’d like to see the stats. I’d want to know how much time and energy goes into maintaining and processing WordPress Themes for WordPress.com. Right now, we’re working on assumptions and familiarity with free, free, everything free, and volunteer effort. WordPress.com is a business, powered by staff, a growing number of staff, as well as volunteers, and they need to be paid. It’s a business, and the Marketplace would also be a business.

WordPress.com users would benefit by having access to some unique and distinctive Themes, but herein lies a catch or two that might have been overlooked.

The Price of Uniqueness Over Neatness

For the Theme designer to make money with this proposal as it stands, the Theme would have access to 1.7 million potential buyers with the goal of selling the use of the Theme to the most people, right? If 500 or 1000 bloggers on WordPress.com are buying use of that Theme, WordPress.com and the designer make money, but the Theme’s use isn’t very original any more, is it?

A unique look to your blog is often worth more than “pretty” or “neat”. I’m sure the majority of WordPress.com bloggers are more into pretty than the value of having the “only look in town”, but there is a market for uniqueness. Those who want a unique look for their blog might be willing to pay more to limit the number of WordPress.com bloggers with access to that look. For them, maybe $500 a year might be worth it to lock down that Theme. This might be worth exploring, too.

Taken even further along the idea chain, a bidding or auction could be developed to bid on the Theme you want for your blog, giving even more credit to the uniqueness issue, as well as creating competition. Imagine if your Theme was hotly bid on, and all the surrounding publicity of the auction? Why stop for just paying, why not sensationalize the process?

Another aspect overlooked in the debate over money and special interest is the challenge made to web designers around the world.

What defines a premium WordPress Theme from a free WordPress Theme?

By what the Theme offers, not just what it looks like.

Personally, I’d be willing to pay to get a Site Map that automatically generates a good table of contents by category and/or tag on my blog. How about the ability to have a Theme which has a magazine style front page with drag-and-drop layouts, and a customizable single post pageview, too? Or one that allows you to add your own conditional tags that say, “if X then show Y” with your blog’s content?

There is so much a WordPress Theme can do beyond the pretty that is rarely explored by web page designers. This is a chance to dig into the possibilities and flexibility of WordPress template tags and code to create powerful Themes that break the walls of the boxes we’ve become so accustomed to.

If someone just wants to change the pretty, they can pay the USD $15 for the CSS Extra which allows changing the stylesheet, but not the Theme’s underlying code.

If they want more, will you be one of those willing to break the mold and set an example for others to follow as you lead?

In the end, while it may be about money to many, it’s also about encouraging development and access. With a little competition and incentive, we can get back to the moon - or at least, get a neat WordPress Theme for our free blogs.

Site Search Tags: wordpress news, wordpress themes, wordpress marketplace, wordpressdotcom, wordpress.com, wordpress theme designs, selling wordpress themes, themes for sale, css extra, buying wordpress themes, matt mullenweg, sponsored themes
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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

WordPress 2.3 Tag News

Lorelle VanFossen — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 12:37:20 +0000

The implementation of the new WordPress 2.3 built-in tag system has not come without some joy and pain. Here are some bits of news and tips to help you with the new WordPress tags.

What is the Difference Between Tags and Categories?

A category is a table of contents for your blog posts, segregating your posts with grouped like-content.

A tag is an index word that helps you micro-categorize your blog posts. Tags are also keywords and search terms people use to search for the content and subject matter of your post. They are specific to the post content but can be used repeatedly to micro-categorize your blog post content.

To learn more about the differences between a tag and category, see:

WordPress 2.3 Tag Features

By default, WordPress 2.3 tags are added to your blog posts via the Write Post panel in a tag input form below the post edit area. The tag words and phrases are linked to the blog post.

On full version WordPress 2.3 blogs, the tag links link to a tag page, similar to a category pageview, of posts on your blog.

Currently, without a WordPress Plugin, tags are edited and managed on a per post basis. You will have to edit that post to change its tags. There is no tag management panel or method, nor a panel to view all your tags or get tag suggestions.

On WordPress.com blogs, the tag links currently link to WordPress.com blogs using the same tag on some WordPress Themes, and to blog content on other WordPress Themes. There is a lot of discussion on why do some themes have local tags instead of global tags and turning off global tags and how to let users know tags are not local. The best fix would be to give WordPress.com bloggers an option on where they want their tags to link to, but right now, it’s everywhere.

For WordPress.com bloggers who want tags, but want to control where they link, you can not use the built-in tag feature and use something like the Tagging Bookmarklet for WordPress and WordPress.com blogs.

WordPress 2.3 Tag WordPress Plugins

UPDATE: Simple Tags WordPress Plugin is getting a lot of attention and respect as a well-rounded Plugin for managing the new native tagging in WordPress. Called the successor to the popular Simple Tagging Plugin, Simple Tags features “type-ahead” input tags, auto suggestion, tag management, listing no-tagged content, mass editing of tags, tags for Pages, tag related content, a possibility of adding related posts inside feeds, tag clouds, header tags, embedded tags, and a lot more.

The following are WordPress Plugins that are designed to work with the native tagging in WordPress 2.3:

How Do I Put WordPress Tags in My WordPress Theme?

The WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, describes the WordPress Template Tag tags for use within your WordPress Themes, if you enjoy doing things manually and taking full advantage of the power of WordPress template tags.

For an indepth look at the structure and specific template tags and handling of tags in WordPress, Ryan Boren has written a “Taxonomy Schema” with all the details.

Nathan Rice covers how to make your WordPress Theme backwards compatible to accommodate the new tags, and how to customize WordPress Tag tags on Themes. You can find more helpful tips and information on WordPress Tags in:

Aaron Brazell - 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.3
Ryan Boren - WordPress 2.3 Database schema changes
Ryan Boren - WordPress 2.3 Taxonomy Schema
How To Add WordPress 2.3 Tags To Your Current Theme by Rich Gilchrest
WPDesigner - WordPress 2.3 Beta Review and Checklist (tips for including tags in your Themes)

What About Ultimate Tag Warrior and Other Tagging WordPress Plugins?

The Ultimate Tag Warrior by Christine Davis has been discontinued and will not work in WordPress 2.3. Do not fret. Christine has created the now popular WordPress 2.3 Plugins: Embedded Tag Thing WordPress Plugin, Tag Managing Thing WordPress Plugin, and Tag Suggest Thing WordPress Plugin.

UTW, Jerome’s Keywords, Simple Tags, Bunny’s Technorati Tags, and other tagging Plugins can have their tags imported into the new built-in tag feature through the Importer panel.

More on Tags in WordPress and Tagging Your Blog Posts

I’ve written a lot about tags and tagging over the past three years. Here are a few articles to help you learn more about how tags work, and how to make them work in your WordPress blogs.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

The Art of Smilies in WordPress Blogs

Lorelle VanFossen — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 21:23:44 +0000

I recently ran across a blog that was stuffed with . You know, those yellow smiling faces that grin, wink, blink and snarl at you from many blog posts?

They are called emoticons by their proper term, but also known as smilies or smileys.

Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t, but they certainly help add emotional context to the intent of your text.

I’ve written about how to add smilies to your blog and there are two great how to articles in the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress users, with Using Smilies and Which Smilies Can I Use on WordPress.com.

There are a lot of different types of smilies you can add to your WordPress blog to customize their look, but honestly, what ever happened to the cute traditional text smilies :-) that we used to use in our emails? Aren’t they good enough?

When used properly, smileys can express the emotional intent of your words. When used excessively, often as a replacement for words, they tend to clutter up a blog post or comment.

Avoid Too Many Smilies

It’s really hard to read a blog post when it’s filled with too many smilies.

The easiest way to avoid the clutter is to not use them so much.

The proper usage of a smiley is to place it at the end of a sentence, after the period. In English, we put a lot of emphasis on the meaning of a sentence towards the end of the sentence, thus, the emoticon should be near the end.

However, if you write long sentence, or compound sentences, then you could, if you wanted , put the smiley in the middle where it would have the most impact, but take care. The comma or punctuation needs to be separate from the smiley for WordPress to recognize it :D, as in these examples, to convert it into the graphic image :(. If you want to use it in a sentence, put the smiley keystrokes in the middle of the text, with space :8 on either side, or with a space between the punctuation and the smiley keystrokes .

Turning Smilies On and Off on a WordPress Blog

WordPress blogs have the ability to turn on and off the graphic versions of the smilies. In the Options > Writing panel:

Check the box that says “Convert emoticons like : and :-P to graphics on display”.
Click Update.

With the checkbox enabled, when you use the various smiley keystroke combinations, they will automatically convert to the characters.

Here are the most common keystrokes which create the most used smilies:

: -
:D -
; -
:( -
:o -
:| -
8O -
:x -
:P -
:? -
:evil: -
:mrgreen: -
:arrow: -
:idea: -

Changing Your Smiley Character Images

There are many smiley character sets available which can be used to replace the default smileys that come with WordPress.

The character images are image files, typically gifs with a transparent background. To change your WordPress blog smilies, you need to replace the graphics with a new set using an FTP program to access the server files and directories on your WordPress blog.

The key to a successful replacement of the old smilies with the new is that the image file names must match the old names for the same images. If you want your grinning face to respond to the :D keystrokes, the image file names must match. Change them accordingly before uploading them to your WordPress blog.

Open the /wp-includes/images/ directory.
Using your FTP program, create a new directory called something like smiliesbackup.
Go to the /wp-includes/images/smilies/ directory and move all of the image files to the new smiliesbackup directory.
Upload the new smiley image files to the /wp-includes/images/smilies/ directory.
Write a test post with smilies in it to ensure the new smilies are working.

Here are some tips for choosing replacement smiley emoticon graphic images:

Keep Them a Reasonable Size: The emoticon graphic image should be all the same size and a reasonable size that does not exceed the height of your blog content text and line height. This prevents space distortions in your text.
Transparent Background: Emoticons are typically saved as gif files with a transparent background rather than colored or white. This allows the circled face to “float” on the background color of the page instead of being in a colored box. If the set you are using has a colored background, you can edit the image with a graphic editor and remove the background color or export it as a GIF, choosing an option that turns the background color to transparent.
Choose Appropriate Emoticons: If your blog is about computer war games, than an emoticon set with warriors or soldiers is appropriate. A set with hearts and bows might not be appropriate.

The Art of CSS and Smilies

Some WordPress Themes automatically insert space around an image so it isn’t mashed up against the content text. A smiley is an image, thus it can inherit the space around an image, making it look strange within the flow of your blog’s text.

To remove this unwanted space, so the smiley will sit inline with the text, add the following to your WordPress Theme style sheet (style.css):

img.wp-smiley {
margin:0;
padding:0;
}

If you have an option in your style sheet to add a border around images on your WordPress Theme, you may want to consider removing it around your smiley images.

img.wp-smiley {
border:0;
}

If you are using a large sized emoticon set, and you want to keep it, even though the font size you are using in your blog content area is smaller than the image size, consider enlarging your font size, or increasing the line-height and spacing to fit the smiley into the structure of the words so it doesn’t push the content or line height around in your post text.

Site Search Tags: wordpress tips, emoticons, blogging tips, post content, smilies, smiley, smilies, little faces, happy faces, blog bling, changing smilies, wordpress
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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

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