Need Blog Advice

I ended up using WordPress and had a full-featured Blog up in about an hour (via a SimpleScripts install at Bluehost.com). Added plugins for Dropshadow, Amazon links, and Mollom, set the options I wanted, then got an acceptable style by modifiying the default Theme in another hour or so.

There were a lot of times I felt like I was trying to type with mittens on when things I tried to do would have been trivially easy with MODx, but I have to give WP credit on the total time it took. I couldn’t have done it in MODx in less than a week (pings, trackbacks, Mollom, and Amazon links alone would have taken days instead of minutes.

I’m still wrestling with WP 2.7’s "intelligent" header image and "dynamic" sidebar. I was also quite appalled by the default Kubrick Theme for WP, which has been around forever, but has completely different elements all styled with just <small> tags and all in the same div. I ended up hacking the core (I think) to give them different classes. And the default CSS file is a mess, with the same classes appearing multiple times in widely different places in the file and tons of characteristics inherited from things that have no relation to them. I hate to think how long it would have taken without Firebug.

I’ll post the link here when I’m finished noodling.

Thanks for all the advice.

Given the situation and the end user I think you made the right choice Bob...

Quote from: BobRay at Mar 01, 2009, 09:28 PM

I ended up using WordPress and had a full-featured Blog up in about an hour (via a SimpleScripts install at Bluehost.com). Added plugins for Dropshadow, Amazon links, and Mollom, set the options I wanted, then got an acceptable style by modifiying the default Theme in another hour or so.

There were a lot of times I felt like I was trying to type with mittens on when things I tried to do would have been trivially easy with MODx, but I have to give WP credit on the total time it took. I couldn’t have done it in MODx in less than a week (pings, trackbacks, Mollom, and Amazon links alone would have taken days instead of minutes.

I’m still wrestling with WP 2.7’s "intelligent" header image and "dynamic" sidebar. I was also quite appalled by the default Kubrick Theme for WP, which has been around forever, but has completely different elements all styled with just <small> tags and all in the same div. I ended up hacking the core (I think) to give them different classes. And the default CSS file is a mess, with the same classes appearing multiple times in widely different places in the file and tons of characteristics inherited from things that have no relation to them. I hate to think how long it would have taken without Firebug.

I’ll post the link here when I’m finished noodling.

Thanks for all the advice.

Bob, I got your PM and I’ll respond soon. Meanwhile, about themes etc in Wordpress, if you want a clean CSS experience with Wordpress, this is the theme to start with:

http://www.plaintxt.org/themes/sandbox/

Other themes there are also good starting points - http://www.plaintxt.org/

Quote from: towerofbabel at Mar 01, 2009, 10:48 PM

Meanwhile, about themes etc in Wordpress, if you want a clean CSS experience with Wordpress, this is the theme to start with:

http://www.plaintxt.org/themes/sandbox/

Other themes there are also good starting points - http://www.plaintxt.org/

I wish I had seen that. I assumed that the default theme would have been made quite solid by now. They do look very clean and configurable (a la Zen Garden) and I could have used the extra width, although they seem really jumpy when resized in IE7.

I may try one out when I have the time. Thanks.

Thanks for all the help and advice.

I did register a domain and was able to style the WP default Kubrick theme the way my friend wanted once I figured out and amended the goofy .CSS it uses. I hate to think what it would have been like without FireBug.

The domain, BTW, is CookBookandLook.com. I wish I could take credit for it, but my friend came up with it (her first domain name ever) pretty much on the spot and named the blog: Cook, Book, and Look. She already has some fairly cool content up.

For the curious, the blog is here:

http://cookbookandlook.com/

What a great idea! Like the content already.

I think the site could use some more styling though. There is a lot of white there. Maybe keep the content area white but have some color or repeating graphic for the body background? I think the content could go wider as well. And maybe a header graphic to tie in the theme of the site?

Nicely done though...

Max

Quote from: Photowebmax at Mar 13, 2009, 11:32 AM

What a great idea! Like the content already.

I think the site could use some more styling though. There is a lot of white there. Maybe keep the content area white but have some color or repeating graphic for the body background? I think the content could go wider as well. And maybe a header graphic to tie in the theme of the site?

Nicely done though...

Max

Thanks. The "client" wanted a minimalist design and likes all the whiteness (and I’m in a kind of minimalist phase myself). I’ll probably widen the content area at some point, but it’s not a trivial job with that WordPress theme. I think we’ll also add some almost-white BG graphics at some point but haven’t found anything we like yet.

Isn’t the width set on the CSS of the theme?

Quote from: charliez at Mar 13, 2009, 12:45 PM

Isn’t the width set on the CSS of the theme?

Sort of, but it’s a mess and you also have to widen several images:

http://i.ndustrio.us/2006/12/19/how-to-widen-your-kubrick-wordpress-theme/

Well, that sort of gets into the whole how do you design a site for a CMS issue.

I don’t think Kubrick is the best starting point though. I found the "clean-copy" series much easier to adapt to ones own design. I was in the middle of all this when I found MODx.

Wordpress is a great platform. It can do many things very well. But using your own design always seemed a little like too much backwards engineering for me.