Stylehack

Ok, so I’ve been organizing some notes on the default template and css that ship with Wordpress 1.2.1 with an eye to making it painless to style it straight out of the box. Being a lazy soul, I like things visual (as in “look at the pictures”) and quick (as in “crib sheet”). In pursuit of this goal, I’ve been putting together several sheets of the default Wordpress template box model as it currently exists… providing a quick visual look at things from different directions and hopefully resulting in something useful to all levels of users (except for the guru-types, of course). Like this:

Okey dokey, installed the update to Tbird tonight to test the RSS Reader feature (was using 0.5 - nothing like being behind - wink). So far so good! It’s pretty straightforward and simple, like the newsreader in NN 4x. No bells and whistles, but it runs in my preferred email program and is easy enough to use. Other than that, I might try my hand at Feedreader because it can be customized and branded. There are a couple others I downloaded to look at also but won’t mention yet; I do know I prefer something that runs on my computer and not through a browser — at least to begin with. Being lazy I’ll probably stick with the RSS Reader in Tbird. grin.

Get off that dern computer! (Ewww, look what ImageMagick did to me!)

Ed. Note: I removed my complaining because I found a   k i l l e r   plugin called the iG:Syntax Hiliter that uses the GeSHi Highlighter. I am thrilled! There are just a couple of things I need to work out, probably “user error”, but I’m going to contact the author for help while singing praises galore! By the way, if you aren’t familiar with GeSHi, be sure to check it out! [rev 9:56 pm CST] Ok, I’ve done a bit of fiddling this morning even though I swore I was “grounded” off the computer all weekend. Fiddling means adding a PHP Styleswitcher to this installation of WP, based on the one found at ALA. Proviso: If you try the Plain Jane style, it actually loads the print.css file for right now which means no navigation! The only way to get back is to use the back button on your browser. First thing to report: I added the runPHP plugin and activated; don’t bother, it not only didn’t work it actually prevented me from editing or deleting a test post including PHP. Since it was just a test of the switcher link, it’s no big deal and I didn’t bother to see what or why. Just deactivated it. Second thing to report: I hate that friggin’ Quicktags and that is the first thing I am going to shut off. What kind of idiots want that formatting their posts??? Just one more thing to slow me down and mess things up. Ok, here’s “How I did it’ re Styleswitcher: 1. Create the switchter.php file (repeated here as a courtesy - see ALA link above for details): [php][/php] 2. Create a my-hacks.php file to declare the stylesheet variables I wanted to use (don’t forget to activate this legacy feature in your admin panel: [php][/php] What I wanted to do here was not only define the stylesheets available to use, but also assign a Title that can be used for linking and even in the header tags if so desired. 3. Ok, here’s the clunky part… I had to change 3 (4) files…

1. index.php (two of these if you installed WP in a directory under your site root but have index.php in your root)
2. wp-comments-popup
3. wp-comments-reply

Ok, those last two didn’t actually need changing right now because I’m not using them… but just in case I figured I’d get it out of the way. I replaced the two existing lines in the header that declare the stylesheets for screen and print with this: [css] /switcher.php?set=“> (print) [/php] …..results in something like: [html] [/html] Aw gee, I is so clever. Caution: This switcher uses a cookie; if you have your browser dumping cookies when it is closed your selection will not be saved for the next time you grace this site with your presence. And now I really AM grounded off the computer for the day. If I left anything out of this explanation, or really did something terrible with my PHP… well, you know the drill. ** Edit: Trackbacks, pings, comments turned off for this post because I am sick of the freaking poker spammers hitting it. 12/05 **