Tag: prose

I’ve done another theme via WordPress.com: This time is ‘Contempt’ by Michael Heilemann. I guess I got bored with the purple background color and opted for the basic white (#FFF) instead. This looks more presentable and cleaner at first glance with gray, purple and some blue without all the different colors floating all over the place from my previous theme ‘Pool’ by Borja Fernandez.

Among the ‘free’ themes available under WordPress.com, ‘Contempt’ for me is by far the easiest to modify with my paid CSS upgrade. It took me only three hours to perfect the layout of mostly borders, fonts, colors and images since we don’t have access to modify the elements.

As usual, I prefer the one column monster at width of 750px (or pixels). This means most of the reading should be done towards the top the browser without the mostly default sidebars located on either side to distract the reading from the content, entry, page, container, wrapper, etc… sections.

Further, I set the font size for the content entries at 1.5em with the ‘titles’ at 2em to accommodate the more myopic individuals. The sidebars, which should be called bottombar for the one column themes, have smaller fonts than prior attempts at trying to make the larger fonts of the post entries match with the fonts in the sidebars.

For a couple of days again, I tried out different themes, including ‘Rounded’ by Ghyslain Armand. This particular theme had rounded corners and colors of brown and lime green. It almost worked out but the navigation bar and its tabs on either side wouldn’t go away. I had a hard time with reducing the size of both the navigation bar and the header towards the topmost part of the browser.

It did have all the category, tag, edit, the date and time stamps for both the pages and posts, including full view for my categories, archives and pages. Unfortunately this current ‘Contempt’ theme lacks these nice date and time stamp features that I’ve been looking for in a theme, which had the navigation bar option at the top, as well as the ‘Tagline’ for my epitaph.

I am hoping this theme will be a keeper. But as expressed in my prior blogs, I’m never satisfied and out of perfection that could never be achieved with the limitation of a free account under WordPress.com. I looked into WordPress.org but I don’t know anything about PHP or SQL and all that jazz. So I’ll stick to the easy stuff here for now.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

As y’all can see, I’ve done another theme. This time it’s ‘Pool’ by Borja Fernandez. I’ve modeled the width, margins and padding to my modified ‘DayDream’ theme by Jim Whimpey and kept my colors for the background, content (wrapper or container), some borders the same. I left the light blue colors for some of the font.

The first challenge was finding the correct combination of margin, padding and width for the body and content (wrapper or container) to center the overall fixed width of 750px to my weblog. The solid 3px borders helped me to determine how well the top portions containing my posts and pages (above) line up with the sidebar (or bottombar) below.

I further tested the three screen resolutions, my favorite 800 x 600 for the largest viewing, and two others — 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024. My goal was to accommodate my large fonts at 1em for various screen pixels as well as the ‘Change Zoom Level’ for those with Internet Explorer browsers. I am proud once again to have made my ‘ideal’ weblog look perfect (to me at least).

Another annoyance but a good learning experience was how to ‘position’ that search bar. It was originally set to ‘relative’ and I didn’t like how it moved around with various screen resolutions and browser zooms. So I tested some more and found a position of ‘static’ worked well. The ‘margin’ was weird at -70px and 10px, with the padding at 0px.

I had to adjust one widget, the ‘Category Cloud’, from a ‘Maximum  font percentage’ of 275 to 145 because the ‘font height’ of the ‘sidebar’ wouldn’t accommodate the word of my largest category, ‘Poetry’, which disappeared behind one of the widget below. I’ll have to look into the CSS stylesheet to find out if I could adjust the ‘font height’ of the ‘tag cloud’ itself without affecting the ‘font height’ of the ‘sidebar’ generally.

The main reason I replaced the ‘DayDream’ theme with the ‘Pool’ theme was because I needed to see my timestamp for all posts and archives. And the data (date, time, category, tags, comments and edit) is located underneath the title to each post, not pages unfortunately. And the fonts for the data are small enough for my purpose with the ‘main’ header (or title) to the pages and posts centered nicely at font size of 1.5em.

My only gripe with this theme is that the header ‘description’ for my epitaph is not included. I’ll need to figure out how to insert a one line text for my ‘Tagline’ underneath my ‘Blog title’: Flynn’s Blog with font size of 2em. I don’t think there is a CSS program that will allow for this particular feature of mine. Nothing is perfect!

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

Yippie! I did another theme revision and this time I used ‘DayDream’! I think this is what I want my beautiful blogs to be presented. First it’s a one column monster. Unlike the ‘ChaosTheory’ theme, the ‘posting information’ is not hanging out to the left of each ‘content’ or post entry. I am still able to get the date and time stamp, only by zooming to each post and not on the main pages.

With the ‘DayDream’ theme, the post entries are now stretched out horizontally at around 675px. For us more myopic readers, my favorite ‘font style’ of ‘Georgia’ is already defaulted and large enough that I didn’t have to adjust the ‘font size’ in my paid CSS stylesheet. The pain locating which of the ‘elements’ needed editing was hardest.

Second, my modified clipart image of a heart from Microsoft is once again nicely located at the upper left hand corner of the ‘header’ with the ‘sitename’ and ‘description’ of my early epitaph aligned to the right. Unfortunately, the color cannot be changed from white (#FFF) to my preferred choice of ‘Dark Weak Blue (#333366). ‘Light Hard Violet (#9933FF) is for the ‘text’ found under ‘body’.

Third, the pink and purple colors are still retained. ‘Medium Weak Blue’ (#666699) is still for the ‘body’ and the ‘hover’ for the ‘menu’; ‘Light Weak Blue’ (#9999CC) is for the ‘footer’ and ‘menu’ and ‘Pale Weak Blue (#CCCCFF) is for the ‘wrap’ or sometimes labeled ‘container’ such as the ‘Andreas09’ theme. I didn’t bother touching some of the soft blue colors for the text and headers.

Fourth, I liked the eye popping presentation of the ‘widgets’ located at the bottom of each page. The CSS editing was done for three to five sections labeled ‘sidebar’. I had to carefully play around with the ‘width’ to figure out which ones affected the layout of this mess. I found out that making the ‘width’ larger to 300px reduced the cloud-like mess into two columns. Another two ‘width’ adjustments of 150px stretched out the narrow ‘lists’ to its full text for ease of reading.

The ‘margin’ html code is useful but annoying. I had to visually map out in my mind (starting from the ‘top’ and going in a clockwise direction) how editing the pixels (or ‘px’) would affect the top, right, bottom and left placements of these ‘objects’. I found a minimum ‘margin’ of 5px is good for the left with 15px being the maximum elsewhere or 10px all around for an even layout.

The ‘padding’ html code, however, is another challenge. I learned how ‘auto’ works: It wraps the text to next line if the word ‘auto’ is placed in between the two pixel (or ‘px’) number. ‘Padding’ means an object is moved around inside the ‘margin’ as if using a scouring pad inside a dirty pot of burned beans.

From the ‘ChaoTheory’ theme and it annoying ‘post information’ to the ‘Andreas09’ theme and its distracting sidebars (found in most WordPress themes), this third theme, ‘DayDream’ is hopefully a keeper. I’ve been working on this one for about four hours and I’m not sleepy because of the caffeine from the many cups of tea I drank earlier this evening. And now it’s almost time for short sleep.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

Once again, after the discovery and successful implementation of my ‘Static pages’, I am indeed a happy camper here at WordPress. I’ve modified the ‘Site Map’ page for a particular incoming ‘Referrer’ via DB’s website. This page is made easier to navigate with the ‘Recent Posts’ link and the titles to describe the web links when a reader hovers the mouse over the web links.

I’ve modified the ‘Home’ page, too. Here, I’ve used the image of a pink heart logo created for WordPress (instead of my black and white photo which made me look like an ‘agent’) and programmed yet another link within this logo directed back to the ‘Site map’ for those coming in to the main website under < flynnsblogs.wordpress.com >.

Without the faq and forum sections of WordPress, I would not have learned how to program CSS and html via my account with WordPress. And this is because ‘nerds’ like me have the passion for some creativity during our spare time and while out of work (partially thanks to TPTB). There is nothing more fun than being alone upstairs and making my website more functionahl than before the CSS upgrade.

The paid CSS upgrade was worth the cost for prettier purple and pink colors in my website. I wouldn’t mind paying for more amenities to make my blogging experience better, by the way, such as organizing our tags and categories in batches.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

[Snork! Snork!] I found some cool logos via [http://faq.wordpress.com/wordpress-logos/] and added those to a couple of my pages. Instead of my black and white photo showing me wearing sunglasses and sporting a ‘halo’, I used a logo ‘Designs by Detlog’ reading: ‘I [heart] WordPress’ for my ‘Home’ page. For my ‘Front’ page, I used ‘Designs by dandya’ showing a logo encircling a black and white letter ‘W’ with a red and white heart on the upper right hand corner.

I plan on using some WordPress buttons via [http://faq.wordpress.com/buttons/] and maybe badges [http://faq.wordpress.com/badges/] on more of my pages. But I’ll have to figure out how to work the text around the buttons or have the text appear when the mouse hovers over the button via < img scr >. There is much work to be done but I cannot find some nice pink or purple buttons to match my overall theme color. I want more logos, buttons and badges!

Anyway the ‘ChaosTheory’ is a definite keeper and is still free under wordpress.com since have no brains to oversee my own website as administrator on a paid web host like wordpress.org. I’ll have to paid my credits to keep this CSS upgrade annually which is fine.

The only drawback I’ve encountered so far is the inablility to organize our tags and categories faster and better than opening, modifying and saving each post to make these changes. The worse thing that could happen is to ‘accidentially’ delete the categories and/or ‘overlook’ the ‘categories to tag converter’ feature. WordPress sure could make me a happy camper if they only program this into our blogs

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

For whatever reason, I’ve deleted my multiple categories yesterday and a bunch more last year. This meant the categories that I was not able to convert to tags have now been place as ‘Uncategorized’. This is annoying and had finished re-tagging and re-categorizing October 2007 and most of the ‘Spams’ for my ‘Posts’.

I had sent a support inquiry to the support at WordPress as to when and if they would program a batch method of updating our categories and tags en masse instead of opening up each post one by one to add multiple tags and categories.

But Matt of WordPress had replied to my email briefly back then and said that they don’t have that feature yet. So this means the duplications are appearing under both ‘WordPress’ and ‘flynnsblogs’ for both tags and categories. And this does not tell me the total breakdown for each of the four main categories I have set up for my purpose via the widgets. This was all because the list of categories got too large and I deleted those last year.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.

Today, I’ve done nothing but modify my weblog. It’s all I could do while waiting for nothing as the days pass by like the clouds that didn’t appear for today’s mostly clear blue skies. I attended morning mass, had breakfast at McDonald’s restaurant, shopped for grocery at the DeCA in Moffett Field, CA and ate only a banana for lunch.

I ran upstairs and tried adding a ‘background-image’ of an old clip-art from Microsoft of a scrollwork, which was originally blue in color but was changed to purple by me. That didn’t work and I was not satisfied as usual. And after exercising to the dance tunes from an old cassette tape with my parental units in the late afternoon, I ran upstairs again.

This time I proceeded to redo the background color of the ‘body’ from ‘Dark Weak Blue’ (#333366) to ‘Pale Weak Blue’ (#CCCCFF). This meant the font color for the body, blockquote and menu had to be darker — the color black (#000000). The font color for the text decoration is ‘Light Hard Violet’ (#9933FF) to make the various links to the widgets located below this ‘Chaos Theory’ theme stand out more; since the text size is very small.

Then I had to increase both the font size to 60px and margin to 30px (of the ‘#header h1’) because I wanted the title to my weblog to stand out. This sort of looked right but the ‘blue rose’ image I tried out from yesterday didn’t seem right and appeared quite pixilated. I wanted a clearer ‘background-image’ to upload (of the #header).

So I went to the Microsoft website and downloaded a copy of a clipart showing a pink heart, which I also changed to a more bluish tone instead. And then I uploaded that one as my new image header. This was prettier, too and best ‘centered’ for an even effect throughout the top. I changed the color of both the ‘#blog-description’ and ‘#header’ to ‘Dark Weak Blue’ (#333366).

Happily, the text header was more readable against the whiter background of the purplish, blue hearts but barely the blog description below. The increase in the margins (first) made the increase of the ‘font-size’ possible, not the other way around as I have discovered on my own as part of my ongoing cross-training of CSS html programming by myself.

Later on this evening and after dinner of lima beans and very salty canton noodles made by ‘Maw’, I resumed my weblog project. I had saved my newest page: ‘Home’. But I didn’t know how I wanted this to look. The online samples I found during my general searches online gave me very little ideas. This time I had to really use my big brain and come up with something creative.

So I opted to creating this ‘Home’ page with a few words of greeting and a thumbnail photo to one of my old photos in black and white. This photo makes me look like an agent with those dark sunglasses on. I liked the ‘halo’ effect around my head, which was really the light from the tall halogen lamp located behind me at the time I took this ‘self-portrait’ with my digital camera.

Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.