Journal
Last week I released a new icon set over on Pro Theme Design. When I first started on the set I had two objectives. 1 - to spend some time learning how to make icons properly, and 2 - to make a set that I could reuse in future projects.
As time went on the set evolved and Circular was the result.
What went right
The overall outcome was quite nice. I made a complete set of over 100 icons, including a few that I use on Pro Theme Design itself.
- When I started the icons I wanted them to have a consistent look and feel, so I created a small palette of swatches that I sampled colours from.
- I learnt a lot about icon design. Ok, not an interesting point, but still worth pointing out. The way I learn is by researching, then doing. Reading about things is fine but if you …
I got banned from Technorati a long time ago. Apparently releasing free themes is bad (and get’s lots of inbound links) only fair I guess 
Anyway, Technorati have dropped off my radar recently, their constant redesigns and confused product are pushing people away, and since they’ve been dropped by Wordpress I don’t visit at all. The thing I am most interested in is the recent announcement that they’re “suspending” blogs using old versions of Wordpress.
Personally I feel this is a well meaning, but misguided, attempt to keep the site clean. I think it’s misguided for two reasons. Firstly, they are going to be blocking a lot of blogs that haven’t been hacked, and secondly they are no doubt letting through a lot of blogs that have been compromised, and then upgraded (with the blog owner none the wiser).
A recent post on CodeScheme - Technorati and Wordpress explains how …
A while ago I released a small plugin that ended up becoming quite popular, and then it broke. Not through any fault of my own (thankfully), but because the Wordpress folks decided to redesign the Wordpress admin when developing Wordpress 2.5, changing pretty much everything in the process.
Then Kerry Webster came along and made his own version of the plugin which works with 2.5, and he kindly said I could nab his changes and add them to mine. So that’s exactly what I did. I took the parts I needed and blended them into the new version of bm-custom-login.
But that’s not all… not only does the plugin now work with Wordpress 2.5 but it has been also been modified to work with Wordpress MU. All very exciting, and hopefully this update will stop all the comments I have been getting about it not working with 2.5 …
A year and a bit ago I wrote a tutorial on splitting the comments, trackbacks and pingbacks up on your wordpress blogs. Then a few months ago Daniel from DailyBlogtips wrote a post on the same subject (a couple people even mentioned my post in the comments 
). I decided then a plugin was needed to do this.
The basics were easy but I was having issues calling the splitter function without user intervention, I like to make things as simple as possible and it just wasn’t working for me. Then, a couple of weeks ago, this post on weblogtoolscollection talked about a similar topic and I noticed the comments_array plugin hook, a hook I hadn’t seen before.
Once I knew what to do it only took me 5 minutes to put it all together (it’s easy when you know how) and I now have a finished working …
The last couple of months I have been spending my free time working on a new website and premium theme.
The website is called Pro Theme Design, and the theme is Mimbo Pro.
Pro Theme Design
Pro Theme Design is a Wordpress theme blog and premium theme store. You will be able to purchase premium themes and read tips on developing themes all in one spot. Yes, there’s paid stuff but I also intend to give away freebies, for example I have also created an icon set, which I will be distributing via Pro Theme Design.
Mimbo Pro
At the start of the year I knew I would be making the Pro Theme Design website, and I thought it would be cool to work with other developers on the themes. The first person I thought to contact was Darren Hoyt, the developer of incredibly successful Mimbo.
We have been working together …
In my excitement to get the BM-Comment-Highlight plugin out yesterday I forgot to tell you how to actually use the thing. Also since posting it yesterday I have though of another feature for the plugin so I have updated it accordingly.
How to use BM-Comment-Highlight
To use the plugin all you have to do is include a single php function call in your wordpress loop. This will return to you a string that you can use as a class in any way you see fit.
<?php foreach ( $comments as $comment ) {
$commentClass = bm_commentHighlight(); ?>
<li class=”<?php echo $commentClass; ?>”>
<?php comment_text(); ?>
</li>
<?php } ?>
When the function is called you will get a number of classes returned (most likely more than one). These let you style the comment appropriately.
The classes you get are:
- author - the commenter is the post author
- reader - the commenter is simply a reader of the blog
- user - the …
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