Archive for the ‘Web Design’ Category
I am a hugely passionate Wed Developer and love building new websites. My skillset largely revolves around WordPress theme development and my theme Elemental is my current fave project. I also like to dabble with the image resize script, TimThumb.
Web Design sub categories : Elemental, Marketing and SEO, Mimbo Pro, Regulus, TimThumb, WordPress and WPVote
WordPress Theme Framework: Less Is More – Or Is It?
I have a conundrum. I want to improve Elemental - my WordPress theme framework. I want to make it lean and fast; but this will involve removing functionality. This in turn means that when people upgrade their themes things may break.
And I don't know what to do?
ExamplesI want to remove options and features and make better use of WordPress built-in functionality. For example:
HTML5: I want to move to HTML 5 for the theme. I'm in the process of making ...TimThumb 2.0
Ok - so - TimThumb. I am sure many people have seen this already but some code exploits were recently discovered in TimThumb. Now that everything is under control once more I thought I would explain what happened and what is going to happen in the future.
The exploit that was found was a bug with the external image resize functionality and the fact it could be used to download and execute files. There was code in place that restricted ...
Meteora, Exhibitor and Byline – New WordPress Themes
In the last 7 months I have released 3 new WordPress Themes on Pro Theme Design and so I thought I would mention them here. The themes cover a variety of website types/ niches, and so are suitable for a range of different people.
If you're interested in any of these themes then you can give them a test run for yourself on the Pro Theme Design preview site.
BylineByline is a magazine/ newspaper style theme. Its unique feature ...
Choosing What to Add to a Premium Theme
Building WordPress themes for Pro Theme Design I have to tread a fine line, between what people ask for, and what people want.
I get loads of feature requests, and generally my approach is to suggest a plugin, or to dig a bit deeper and work out why the request has been made. The requests normally end up filtered into one of three piles.
Will it benefit me or my own ...TimThumb Quality Settings
Recently I have had a couple of emails about changing the amount of compression on TimThumb cropped images. The change itself is really easy, however I thought I would write it up as a reference for those who aren't aware of it's existence.
To change the level of compression all you have to do is edit the 'q' (which stands for quality) parameter in the query string.
If you don't set the value then ...
How To Fix WordPress and Mod Security 2
Recently my website was moved to a new web server, and in the process the server software was upgraded, and it broke some parts of my site. It took a bit of digging but in the end I worked out that the problem lie with Mod Security - a server plugin that improves security but can sometimes inadvertently break features.
Simple WordPress Post Thumbnails with Regular Expressions
These days everyone with a blog understands the importance of thumbnail images. Three years ago it was common place to have exclusively text, but now a nice image is a requirement. As such the process of implementing the image needs to be made easier.
With my WordPress themes, Elemental in particular, I have simplified things as much as possible. You can set your own thumbnail using the WordPress featured image functionality, or you can use custom fields (which is generally ...
Optimizing WordPress 404′s
One of the great things about WordPress is how 404 error pages are handled. If a page isn't found then you can show a proper dynamic error page giving the user things to do - this removes a lot of the traditional problems with 404 pages, ie the dead end syndrome.
