Archive for On the WordPress Front

I’ve been working on a fully fluid-width, XHTML Strict, table-less, three column child theme for WordPress’ Twenty Ten default theme…

And in the process, discovered a bottom margin bug!

I submitted the bug to a Trac ticket HERE and also documented the fix that would squash the bug flat and make Twenty Ten render the way it was supposed to which I will share here in my blog.

The Bug (in short):

The margin-bottom: 20px that is applied to the footer div triggers a well known CSS bug causing the 20px margin to be applied to the adjoining/bottom margin-touching wrapper div instead of the footer div.

That bottom margin you see at the bottom of the page where the end of the content wrapper should be touching the bottom of the screen?

That’s the bug.

The Fix (in short):

To correctly apply the 20px margin-bottom to the footer div and not accidentally to the wrapper div, the wrapper div needs to be given a 1px padding-bottom and the footer div needs to be given a 19px margin-bottom.

The padding applied to the wrapper where it touches the bottom of the footer container will trigger the margin-bottom to be rendered correctly for the footer and not the wrapper as the padding will add some ’separation’ between the two containers.

Another fix is to add a 1px border to the bottom of the wrapper and leave the 20px margin-bottom on the footer.

The border adds ‘content’ to the bottom of the wrapper which triggers the margin-bottom for the footer to be rendered correctly.

Why the Bug Happens:

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So I’ve been getting a crapton of completely illegitimate ‘PORNO!’ and ‘VIAGRA!’ type of comments which get stuck in Akismet’s spam queue.

Because each of these comments is literally a full screen’s height long and mostly contains text which I cannot read (language, huge blocks of text and links, AND tiny font sizes), shuffling through more than a pageful to make sure legit comments make it through to me is honestly a serious pain on my EYES and can trigger migraines on a bad day.

In an effort to cut back on this sort of spam in my spam queue and in an attempt to not alienate any of my potential commentors, I have installed a plugin called Conditional CAPTCHA.

What this plugin does is this: If the Akismet spam identifier identifies a comment as a potential spam (yes, the plugin works alongside Akismet!), it will present to the person who is submitting the comment a fill-in-the-blank/text-based CAPTCHA.

The commentor will be asked to identify and type in two digits (eg: first digit and third digit) from a string of text-based digits and if they type in the right ones, the comment will pass and if they type in the wrong ones or don’t type at all, the comment gets auto-deleted.

It is not an ideal solution, but as I struggle with a status migraine, it is something I am going to implement until I can find a better alternative.

If anyone has any ideas or comments, please share them!

And to reiterate: The CAPTCHA ONLY shows up when Akismet has already identified the comment as potentially spammy.

~ EMG

After my last Bulletin Board update, I think my Bulletin Board is going a bit… overboard.

I initially created the Bulletin Board post to serve as… well… a bulletin board for people to catch up on the most recent administrative updates without having to dig through my blog.

I still like the idea, but…

Look at how long the Bulletin Board post is getting!

I don’t want it to take up a third of my blog page, but that’s exactly what it is doing. On the other hand, I also still want to serve up my most recent administrative updates all in one post block area.

Ideas?

One of the more feasible/do-able ideas I was considering is to code a WordPress-specific PHP loop that would list posts from my Administration category and then display the list in the block that I currently label as Bulletin Board.

This would offer visitors to my site a listing of all the most current administrative posts while also cleaning up some textual clutter.

The downside would be the necessity to alter a theme file in order to insert such a post as the Sticky Post I am using now would be replaced with a permanent ‘post’ that posts according to a PHP loop.

Hmmm…

~ EMG

… to the WordPress community.

So I was reading Andy Peatling’s post on giving back to the community in regards to open source projects (like WordPress, BuddyPress, bbPress, etc) and it got me thinking.

How have I given back to the WordPress (and other similar) communities?

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I have read several articles that discuss this same topic…

but the conclusions drawn and suggestions offered by the other authors don’t really go into any sort of detail on WHY they concluded and suggested the way they did.

For that reason, I decided to write up my own thoughts regarding ‘turning a WordPress powered website into a website and not a blog’.

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Sharing some (old!) thoughts…

about the ‘ease’ of WordPress theming:

NOTE: This is an excerpt and add-on to an old post of mine that I made in the forums a long while back. The original topic was in regards to people asking for very basic XHTML and CSS help in theming, which prompted a bit of a discussion on how WordPress IS a five minute install, but whose theming is NOT for the complete newbie.

“Well, if WP would make it absolutely clear PRE-installation that in-depth theme customization and/or Theme Development/Design is best left to the savvy front-end web developers or, at the very least, to the people who have -some- sort of front-end knowledge, then maybe there wouldn’t be so many people flocking to the forums with the ‘Help me theme my WP because I don’t understand CSS or XHTML!’ issues?

Just a thought?

The impression I’m getting is that everyone ELSE is getting the impression that WP is easy-peasy to custom theme by oneself when it isn’t easy-peasy without having at least some working knowledge of what goes into WP theming.

For the record, I like WP how it is and have no complaints myself, but I actually do front-end stuff and what appealed to me the most was the ability for me to dig into WordPress on my own and make it my own.“

EDIT 1: And it would seem that Bob Dunn at Cat’s Eye shares similar sentiments on WordPress being an ‘answer to all our prayers’. Have a look HERE!

EDIT 2: I will clarify my own thoughts in a later post.

~ EMG