I am super excited about Wordpress 3! It isn’t in the final release yet as of today (April 2010), but it is coming to many a websites real soon. We have been working with a project recently that is using version 3 (in beta), and various enhancement are going to revolutionize Wordpress as a content management system. Most notably the Custom Posts Feature.

In a nutshell the way Wordpress is set up in previous versions is like this: at the very basic you have Posts, and Pages. These are your (very) basic content types, Posts are items in your blog, and Pages are basic static-type pages.  In previous versions, if you want to have a custom sections or want to hack Wordpress to be more like a content management system, you would have to create a special category (or tag) in your blog, and pull in that category (or tag) on the front end (in a template file) to show the custom content. One of the main issues are that the blog is for blog posts and if you are putting everything into your blog, you have to filter the blogs display so it doesn’t show your custom content in the blog.

Now with version 3 and Custom Post Types you can create and new “Post Type” for this custom content, and even have a separate area in the admin for the content type. Let’s say for example you want to have a “Portfolio” feature that displays your portfolio, but you don’t want that content in the blog. You will be able to create a “Portfolio” custom post type and this area will now show up as a collapsible section like your Pages, and Posts do in the admin.

This feature is great for clients who need a straight forward  management system for their content they update. If you want to add addition info to go along with your custom post type you can create a series of Taxonomies which were introduced in version 2.3. For example: Let’s say your Portfolio “post” needs associated fields with it like Client, Project Type, and Industry, instead of using the custom fields feature (which is sure to confuse most clients), you can use the taxonomies and pull that data in. Taxonomies are a lot like categories are in the blog, except they can be used as categories for your custom post type. Now in the admin panel when creating a new “Portfolio” post, you will have taxonomies displaying like categories do, and can select/create the appropriate related info to go along with your Portfolio post.

The custom posts require you to add some code into your site, but a cool plug-in called Custom Post Type UI lets you create your custom post types and custom taxonomies in the back-end. Check out their video on the plug-in page which explains custom posts in greater detail using the example of “Movies” as a custom post type.

Originally published at Amber Taylor's SharpBlog. You can comment here or there.

Over the years as a designer and web monkey, I have witnessed the situation where a print designer creates a website. Not understanding the technical limitations, and other nuances of this medium the print designer usually creates a layout that has technical issues that the developer has to code up. In the case where the designer does it all, the websites mark up usually has many issues that impact, S.E.O., usability, accessibility and a host of other problems. The web is a relatively new medium to design for and always has some new way to do something, but that being said it is now time for print designers to come up to speed with the web.

I would like to note this is just a starting point and there are a lot of points to cover, some that won’t make it into this post and multiple posts will follow. If you have something to add please fell free to leave a comment.

For the Print Designer Creating the Design and HTML

1. Don’t Export HTML from Photoshop
   I have seen this time and time again, and with the “occasional” exception of HTML emails, this is not what you should do. There are multiple issues with this method of creating web pages. First: The search engines (and site visitors) only see big pictures held in place by a convoluted set of tables. The web’s purpose is to present multiple types of content on a page like images, body text, headlines, lists, video, flash, and all kinds of media. when Photoshop creates html it sticks all of your design’s text into images which essentially hides the content from the search engines. Also by using tables to hold the page together it obstructs the mark up and makes it harder for search engines to find any text on your pages (if there is any). Some may say “We’ll just add alt tags with the content”. Alt tags are for image descriptions not body copy or any kind of content. This still hurts you page rank. if you have not learned enough to code up your own page yet, build your site in Dreamweaver’s design mode. This will get you started to bridge the gap and eventually be able to code your own html, and css.
2. Tables are Tables, not Div’s
   Tables used as structural elements on the web page had their day when CSS was far from being implemented. However CSS is here and it empowers the designer to new levels. Where do you use tables? When the deign has a data table of course. One thing that really helps to code up pure css designs are CSS frameworks like 960 and Blueprint. They have PSD and IA templates to help design as well as HTML generators to make your life easier.
   
3. I Don’t Know How To Code HTML and CSS
   It is time to learn, the future is the web, heck the present is the web! It is really not that hard once you get going, there are a million places to learn on the net. Here are a couple of them:</p>
   • http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/0…
   • http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/
   • http://css-tricks.com/what-beautif…
   • If you want to pay to learn: Lynda.com
   • http://csshtmltutorial.com/
   • http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/devel…

Originally published at Amber Taylor's SharpBlog. You can comment here or there.

THE QUICK ANSWER: Put your resets at the very beginning of your html-elements.css file

We at Sharpdot recently completed a large series of websites using Drupal. After months of designing comps, coding them up, adding all of the special functionality, we discovered some style issues (and it wasn’t just IE problems this time!) After quite some time of trying to figure out what was going on, we discovered it was that the Zen theme does not add reset styles to there theme!

Unfortunately there has been an argument to not add reset styles in the Drupal Zen theme. This is quite concerning, mainly because our mission as a web shop is to code our sites up to be pixel perfect to the PSD’s and comps of the project. The arguments I have seen against resets are that they want the ability to style things quickly without being hampered by having to restyle all of the typographical elements and just let the browser do the work with it’s defaults. Well this can create many problems especially between  Windows and Mac platforms and the differences in the way they render their text. Our standard operating procedure is to have resets at the beginning of all styles them restore defaults to the page elements. This approach normally works great, however we are dealing with Drupal here, and Zen’s sub-theme approach.

So where do you start? Well my first thoughts were to add a new resets.css file to the theme and include it using the .info file in the sub-theme like you are supposed to do for JavaScripts and IE hack stylesheets. Well after doing this the styles kept on being added after other elements I was trying to reset first in the stylesheet order. After more research and trial and error, I found that reset styles are supposed to go into your html-elements.css file at the beginning of the code. For some reason this is the way the Zen Drupal theme people made it work. I am sure there is some argument out there for it, but there you go it’s Drupal, where nothing is that simple, but it can do just about anything.

One thing we have built here at Sharpdot is a library of starting themes, boilerplate’s and functionality which we can use to streamline our development as well as keep a consistency on all projects. One of the next things I have on my list is to make a Drupal Zen theme boilerplate with our edits available (with CSS resets!), check back for that.

Originally published at Amber Taylor's SharpBlog. You can comment here or there.

The Sexual Side Effects are Back!

...and now there is a new line up for the SSE! New in the band on Bass and Vocals is Endo also known as Angela "Bucky" Motter from Hedwig fame. Chuck Brittain on Guitar and Vocals. Last but certainly not least Clay McClure on Drums.

Join us for Encyclomedia's Chili Cook off and Open House. Featuring music by The Sexual Side Effects as well as the Judies. This show is going to be completely different. The bands will be performing in a Television Sound Stage, with green screen and all.

FREE BEER...3 Kegs of Sweetwater, and Keg from the Nantahala brewery of a fresh batch!

Encyclomedia is a Video Production Company, but rents out offices in the building to other companies ranging from, Web Designers, Developers, Video Game Developers, Record Producers, and Independent Video Production Companies. The open house will be a really cool collection of people from the creative/multi-media walks of life. Encyclomedia is located on DeKalb Ave. between Radial Cafe and the Wall Crawler Rock Club next to the Candler Park MARTA station. Come early to get some Chili!

Come see the show and do a little networking to boot. The Sexual Side Effects play at 10pm. So if you have somewhere else to go on Friday evening, come here first, advance your career/contact list, and be amazed by the new S.S.E.

FREE
7pm: Doors / Open House / Chili Cook Off
7:30 Bodhizaffa
8:45 The Judies
10:00 The Sexual Side Effects

SSE Online at: http://www.myspace.com/thesexualsi…
The Judies online: http://www.myspace.com/thejudies

Friday, November 20, 2009

Live Journal needs a Like Button.

Yes! I have found a Zen sub-theme for Drupal based on the 960 grid system. I have not checked it out quite yet, but I am going to give it a whirl soon.

Here is the link: http://duvien.com/blog/960-grid-sy…

For those of you not familiar with grids here is a link to the 960 css grid system. This one is my favorite, I have tried other like Google’s Blueprint and have even created my own. 960 looks the best from a design standpoint giving 20px gutters as the default. Designs as well as HTML build will shine with this grid added in, and make it a whole lot easier when a client wants to change something in the build/after launch phase.

960 Grid System: http://960.gs/

Google’s Blueprint Grid System: http://www.blueprintcss.org/

Originally published at Amber Taylor's SharpBlog. You can comment here or there.

Why is everyone talking about dragons today?

Saw this cartoon on http://www.cssquirrel.com/. I guess the monster is Microsoft… well actually I don’t guess I am sure it is.

Originally published at Amber Taylor's SharpBlog. You can comment here or there.

Oh yeah!