lhk

Hi,

I’m pulling this up again, as by now I tried Monkeyeditor and Chenpress, neither worked/worked as hoped for.

With ME only the TinyMCE compatible version worked at all, and that just as badly as the in-built editor. The FCKeditor didn’t play nice with Imagemanager (same in Chenpress) and the TinyMCE full version one inserted random code into the interface where it doesn’t belong.

So, I’m still at a loss with regards to a good wysiwyg editor for WP 2.0.

My dream solution would be a Quicktags editor with a wysiwyg window. I haven’t found anything like it, but it’s the cleanest of all editors I tried so far.

Any other recommendations?

I’m also looking into the offline blogging clients, but haven’t so far seen one which allows for editing of existing posts?

…single letter by letter …

;-P

…and how they do, you’d be astonished ;-)))

And to clear up this much:

https://wordpress.com/tos/

Of course the ToS contains the relevant clauses against material not in compliance with existing law published by users/clients of wordpress.com.

Hi,

depending on your FTP-client you may not see the .htaccess file due to its naming convention.

Also, as long as you haven’t engaged permalinks it is highly likely that your blog doesn’t yet have a .htaccess file at all.

Ahemm,…

…so far I believed that at least among the moderators are people more knowledgable about (internet) law, about hosting, hosting contracts and the responsibilities of hosts.

If Theresa is mentioned in a harrassing, maybe even sexually harrassing, way or in a diffamating way on a website maintained at a certain host, and cannot contact or effect any change in behaviour with the owner of that site itself, then it is the HOST who has to change things and tell his client to stop doing this (at least if he doesn’t want to be involved in a probably VERY COSTLY lawsuit).

Theresa, before now someone says that “Matt” probably doesn’t have the standard “no harrassment, no diffamation, etc.” clause in his hosting contract and so can’t/needn’t do anything there, can then also go to the nice people who provide this host (=Matt) with connection to the net itself, and you can be extremely sure that these guys do have such a clause in effect which Matt had to sign, when he signed with them. They may just decide to shut Matt’s connection down as long as he doesn’t shut down sites which harrass/diffame people.

Theresa’s choices are by no means exhausted with just asking the host more or less nicely to effect compliance with laws on his server. She can also try with the Postal and Mail fraud department and with the FBI internet crime department, who also tend to listen if criminal activities or content is reported.

Thus, it maybe funny to pander jokes at an obviously very frustrated person, but it certainly doesn’t gel with the situation at hand.

Change the links order in the links administration interface.

If you’ve too many links you might consider making a links page and point to that in the sidebar, instead of listing all links in the sidebar itself.

Hi Leevi,

no, I don’t blog myself (I never even maintained a diary while in puberty ?? ). And I’m also not at liberty to publish clients’ URIs. But from my choices below, you’ll be able to gather how sites made by me look like.

I can however illustrate what I mean about “visual design” and individuality, fun and zest and what I do miss, both in your design and in that of many WP themes, especially those mostly liked by hardcore users.

Not all of these here are blogs, not all are even CMS, but this essentially doesn’t matter. All of them would make me visit again, if applied to a site with the kind of content they’d match, all have a clear message about their owners, most do not at all take themselves too seriously, and those (commercial) ones which do, do so in a toned enough down way to not scream “I wanna make money outta you!”. Even the one front page which really wants to go deep into your pocket.

Here’s a recent one from the Zengarden which made me say “Holy Cow!” and immediately run for the Bordeaux in the cellar. It also would make me come back for repeated leisurely reading, especially if e.g. the blog of a gregarious food and wine connaisseur:

https://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/179/179.css&page=1

A couple of commercial-type designs which do not crawl all over the visitor with selling/ads/bargainhall or run of the mill atmosphere:

https://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/094/094.css&page=12

https://www.cornell.edu/

https://www.livingpixel.com/site/

And among them a frontpage hard to improve:

https://www.ferrari.de/

“Quaint”, however quite personal, and exuding that “comfy”-feeling, which also would make me come back for more reading:

https://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/091/091.css&page=12

https://www.alistapart.com/

A photo-“blog” which blew me away and still belongs to my favourites:

https://lumilux.org/

And another such photoblog, different, yet also very classy:

https://jamesmuspratt.com/widescreen/demo/

“Fluid” CSS designs, (very) personal, well-styled and (just as important as the coding) visually intriguing, creating that “gut feeling”:

https://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/014/014.css&page=22

https://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/001/001.css&page=23

Great blog designs, mostly clearcut, some with frills, all very personal, speaking loudly of their owners:

https://thehumanmuseum.com/blog/index.php

https://themes.wilshireone.com/waw/

https://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/186/186.css&page=1

https://joshuaink.com/

And here are two articles about the topic, which nicely explain as well, what I go on about:

https://www.andyrutledge.com/painting-a-better-landscape.php

(one of the single most important sentences in this article: “I’m sorry, but design has nothing to do with divs or semantics”)

https://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/how-crap-is-your-site-design

It should clear up what I’m talking about: programming is only half of the deal, if even half at that.

Hi again,

if you do not want to show, try looking at your CSS as displayed in the Firefox webbuilder/webmaster extension. If it loads as you wrote it, you can fiddle with it while looking at it. It it doesn’t load as you wrote it, you may have to hunt for the reason why. One reason may be that your theme doesn’t draw on the CSS file you altered, instead it calls a different file.

Hi yuh,

first off – why so aggressive?

What is a “spy”? And what is a “producer”? Is there some conspiration theory at large here, or what? I’m just a plain ole webmaster and designer, nothing else.

Yes, I noticed that there are lots of “kubrikish” themes out there, which already has astonished me quite a bit. I don’t particularly like it (even tho I adapted it for those clients who were hellbent on wanting it), but if you would ask me which (of the two – Kubrick or Origami) I liked best, my most probable answer would be “none of those”.

“Visual and communication design”, per se, is NOT about technical and programming aspects. That’s why I completely fail to see anything extraordinary – designwise – in either of these themes.

As to the design of Origami, and that’s my personal review now:

The colors are drab, green not being an extremely good color on the net any which way. It immediately screams “artificial”. The attempt at “playfullness” in the graphics and the coloring of text, borders and rounded buttons is pretty boorish when compared to truly well-made artistic “graphic play”.

Then, it’s absolutely run of the mill, and that I mean from A to Z, from the rounded corners (get them practically on just about any cheap site by now), especially as the columns don’t really align symmetrically, the coloring of text and borders is bland “non-offensive style” adopted by so many commercial sites, the buttons are typical run of the mill buttons you find literally on a gazillion commercial sites, the design doesn’t ease reading, and the color scheme in itself isn’t really geared even to the two main colors it attempts to play with. The most pleasing version is the 100% width one, the others are visually unbalanced (to put it mildly).

Lastly, and most importantly in my personal book: this doesn’t stand out in any way. You go onto such a site, you go to the next, or you hunt for some book, software or CD on the net: all the same. Nothing to remind you of that one special site there. Meshing with this is that I do not see anything *personal* or individual, anything which says “hello world! Here I am, this is my site, it’s ME.” Even when I look at/read a bit through the author’s blog.

So, if you like it, and I’m certainly not saying you shouldn’t, I wonder just what it is in WP users, that makes them choose “reactionist”, “run of the mill” and “bland”. One might say “conformist”.

It’s by the way not just this theme, not by a mile. Saying this aloud and asking about this was a process which came about during the past year or so, while reading threads, looking at – here – acclaimed sites, looking at themes and watching the past themes contest.

Now, while I certainly concede that for many a conformist, traditional-style theme may be a must, because there are pressures placed on them in this regard, I do not in the slightest understand, why this would have to be so in e.g. an open style/theme contest or when reviewing the themes/designs of others posting here. If I look at theme contests among other CMS (not just blogs), there usually is at least a 30% amount of extraordinary, fresh and non-conformist themes to be found. Many of which make it high up in the ranks. If in a set community this is not so, one may wonder why it is not so, que no? And one need not be a “spy” or whatever to wonder where the zest is gone to. ??

What do you mean by “completely messed up” in detail?

Does the page load with *any* CSS or is there no CSS applied at all?

Hi Bhoney,

it looks the same.

Can you please explain why you think it looks so “good” to you?

Hi LiverpoolLad,

apology accepted, and no, I indeed don’t criticize just for the hell of it ;-). As a designer and webmaster such things do interest me immensely. It’s the curiosity-killed-the-cat-thing rather than anything else ?? I just want to know why people are attracted to something, when I’m not at all attracted.

And sure enough, there are sites on the net which just blow me away and I go “but sheesh, that’s something you could have thought of!” or “wannahavewannadotoo”. Among blog design curiously – and I guess that’s a sacrilege saying that, sorry – I found the most fantastic designs among MT, Nucleus and Textpattern users. No idea why this would be so. Maybe the basic programming of the software? The ease of use of WP? No idea, really.

I use WP for a lot of “private” sites, my designs are geared to the person/topics they represent and I find it – in most cases – very easy to accomodate and still create pleasing, workable and personal design with WP.

However, when I check the themes finding most acclaim here among the users – like the above-mentioned – and have myself a close look at them, I’m astonished that so many are run of the mill, often bland and boring and what to me is at best mediocre. What I said before: technically ok, design-wise not bad, but also not really good and never really outstanding.

Probably this truly has some psychological “connection” with the software philosophy or something. I dunno. But this whole thing very much intrigues me. That’s why I ask why WP people root for this sort of designs so much.

Hi Liverpoollad,

you will have a HARD time finding me calling ANYONE silly for posing a question – or for having other ideas about “good design”. Sorry, but that needed to be said.

Apart from that, your answer doesn’t satisfy me really (I’m still waiting for the answer of the original poster).

Fluid divs, nifty navigation or CSS switchers are a matter of programming. They can be applied to other themes. And they – to me – are not making a theme or design “outstanding”. They are programming, that’s all.

“Looking like commercial sites” isn’t really a recommendation in my book, many of the commercial sites are plain awful, too loaded or too run of the mill. That’s why I asked, this design (as opposed to the programming) is pretty run of the mill and mediocre. It’s nothing I’d go hopping enthusiastic about and it doesn’t lend itself to bettering through modification either. It’s not really bad, it’s better than many, but it’s not really good either or even excellent as a design.

So the enthusiasm is astonishing for me. And that’s an honest opinion and an equally honest question.

And I’m not calling anyone here silly for liking that design, mind me please.

Hi,

you can modify a theme without it being the active one. You don’t see previews then though.

One possibility is installing a themeswitcher which only switches as per user. That ought to give you a (personal only) view of the theme you’re modding.

Or, better yet, you install XAMP (or something alike) and mod the theme on your own computer.