Oh my blog.
Attached are some images for my blog. I think you guys have all heard me grumble about the interwebz and how I find a lot of web design garish and scary and somewhat painful to look at…so with that as an influencing factor I pared my own design right now to the bare bones (but with some sneaky hover over bits, adding a bit of tech to it).
I think I will actually develop this into a personal blog, I have been putting that off for a while now, that is more of a tool for staying in contact with friends around the world and potentially showcasing my portfolio, although this is less of a concern. Inspiration in terms of content are sites like this and this and this and this but most importantly a personal touch (and easy on the youtubes). What drives me nuts about most ‘blahgs’ is the gigantic regurgitation of information and how people add zero personalized content, information, opinions, whatever.
Yadda yadda yadda, images attached, must learn how to diddle css to make those little hover guys, I know it is possible!
Edit: I am so awesome at the internet that I can’t get these imgs to load properly, so please right clicky –> view image on them to see what they actually look like.
my bl*g design.
Here they are, with grid and without.
Update:
I’ve also added a links/image mockup.
Update 2:
This would be a blog about art and technology, targeting the sort of people who read Make or BoingBoing (or Wired Magazine in the early 90s), but also ArtForum, Metropolis, Frame and the like. People who are interested in things like this and this and this and this and this and this and this, who are equally comfortable geeking out at an Uta Barth opening or a digital workflow presentation. The purpose would be to group notes/ideas/events on these related interests in one convenient place. I am planning to create the menu drop-downs with Javascript (still working that out though).
Here are a few themes to consider. The people making these are sort of hilarious - they clearly know CSS quite well, but have almost zero typographic sense. I thought these three were interesting more from a grid/layout perspective.
Feedback/class comments: avatar as real image [fixed], resolve tags in header [removed], date/tags per post seem “detached” [added color to unify with post heads and blog title bar], fix quoted text [fixed], make bullets appear as such [fixed]
Brief: We’re theming!
Thanks Michael!
Over the next two weeks we will start making our themes. Starting from design, through HTML/CSS and further through Wordpress. You’re going to have two main deadlines over the next two weeks:
By Tuesday, March 3th:
- Upload the Photoshop designed mainpage of your blog. Based on the way you defined it for today (purpose, inspiration and so on)
Rather than using only html/css elements, try to think how background images can help you spice up your design, check CSS Zen Garden (and others) for inspiration. Use Firebugs to check how things are done behind the scenes. - Comment on at least 3 posts by other students (if you post early you get more feedback, so start working this weekend)
- Try installing themes on your blog and look through their structure
- Install the Sandbox-BP theme into your wp-content/themes folder, turn it on, play around with it.
By Friday, March 7th:
- Upload the revised design for your blog based on the feedback you got from your classmates.
- Start writing your extend.css file to add to the default styling
By Tuesday, March 11th:
- Post a link to your blog with your own design starting to be implemented and with questions and tips about building a theme
- Use our discussion list to flag issues and questions to the rest of us (by all means don’t wait for the last moment)
- Comment on other’s posts and questions
For our next class Friday, March 14th:
- Try to have your main blog page as close to completion as possible.
Enjoy!
thanks again Michael!
see you in two weeks,
Mushon
Brief: Finish the tutorial, start thinking of a blog
Hi Class.
Next week I will unfortunately not be with you, I will be replaced by Michael Mandibeg, a new media artist, design educator and web developer who will be introducing you to the behind the scenes of WordPress.
We will give our tutorial another week so we can feel good about moving to the next assignment and knowing we have learned some CSS while we were at it. We will also setup our hosting plan and install Wordpress. And we’ll also start research towards our final project involving infiltrating a real open source project and giving our Graphic Eye for the Open Source Guy.
So:
- If you still need to, finish your tutorial CSS layout. Use the Blueprint mailinglist and our mailing list to bounce ideas instead of slamming your head agains the keyboard.
- Choose the theme for your Wordpress theme:
- What kind of blog is it? (if it’s even a blog…)
- Who is it for?
- What are the functions it should fulfill?
- Pick three inspiration sources one for content, one for structure and one for presentation.
- Go theme hunting through the thousands of free-software themes out there on the internet. Post three of them to our blog in the form of a thumbnail + a links to the theme page.
- Install the The latest Wordpress release on your site:
- Follow the one click install id you’re on any of these (and others) that provide it.
- Or the step by step 5 minute install tutorial on Wordpress.org or the visual tutorial over here.
- Next week Michael will show you around the nuts and bolts of Wordpress, so make sure you’re prepared.
- Start searching for an open source project to contribute to.
PHP dates for use in WordPress.
Though this isn’t directly related to CSS, it is a styling issue of sorts. I found while messing around with the WordPress templates that I wanted to change the date formats from something like [February 18, 2008] to something like [18 Feb 2008]. WordPress uses PHP, so it’s just a matter of checking the online PHP manual for which letters will create which date format (easy enough to find on your own, but now we have a direct link). See also this WordPress documentation page for how to use the characters in WordPress.
hosting
I thought I’d mention a couple of additional hosting options… I’ve used both of these companies with great results.
- Reliability of Pair Networks (who I’ve also used) without the additional expense
- Slightly better than WestHost in terms of uptime and communication
- Minimal control panel, which I think is good: simple and powerful
- No one-click WordPress install, but they are configured for manual installation; it took me less than 5 minutes.
- One type of account offered, can host up to 10 domains (again, simple and powerful)
- Better documentation, some better tools
- Control panel interface is clunky, but might be more user-friendly than Pair if you’re new to web hosting
- One-click WP install (according to their site)
- Better support, should you end up needing it.
- Cheapest accounts only allow one domain (not good)
I’ve been using Pair/Pairlite for the past two years and was with Westhost for a couple of years before that. Both have free domain registration and both are good about letting you know when your site may be down (usually for less than an hour at times when few people would be accessing it – 2am Sunday morning or similar).
There are a LOT of a web hosting providers out there and some are absolutely terrible. Paying $1/month probably isn’t going to get you great service, but some of the $20/month providers will be just as bad. I still think the best recommendation is from someone you know who has used the service in question.
