KC-SEOv2 – WordPress Theme FUBAR

Yeah, yeah, yeah… I know. My new theme isn’t quite working.

I’ve just had Andy Beard email me about it this evening (and Jane over at Cyres Cafe mentioned it as well) to say that the HTML Purified plugin isn’t working as expected on the comments (Thanks to both of you, btw!). PHP Warnings – ouch! The plugin is pretty new and will probably need a bit more testing – this is one of John’s plugins but he’s probably battling some other WordPress plugin issues at the moment…

Well, I’ve switched it off for now until it gets fixed – if you want to make a comment then go ahead. Do it now! After reading a bit more on Andy’s blog about the DoFollow movement, I’ve turned off the nofollow on the comments and I’m trying out Lucia’s Linky Love plugin which looks pretty good. What does it do? Well, probably best to check it out for yourself – the general idea about DoFollow is that comments help to share the link love and reward users that comment properly. However, you don’t want spammers to fill your old comments up with junk links, so that’s where the plugin comes in handy! Anyway, Andy’s got a whole list of them on his “ultimate list” page for DoFollow plugins – well worth checking out…

Some of you might also have noticed that the layout is completely FUBAR’d on some pages. Okay – yeah, I know. No need to rub it in! You’re right, you’re right… I know, you’re right!

That’s ’cause it’s been a *long* while since I put on my Development gloves and my CSS hat on. The stylesheets are in the process of being redone at the moment. I’m doing a spot of research into various 3 column theme layouts using CSS2 that maintain the center content is the first to appear in the source of the page. It’s not an easy thing to do. Even though A List Apart has a great tutorial on “The Holy Grail”, this is only good if you want a fluid layout instead of a fixed one (i.e. 100% of your viewport, “stretchy” content with fixed sidebars on either side). At the moment, I’m still going through Joshuaink’s “Simple” Introduction To 3 Column Layouts and revisting cascading stylesheets as this looks more like what I’m after – a fixed width solution but one that also includes “skip” links for users who have text browsers or screenreaders.

I’m just wondering whatever happened to CSS3? Man, it should be done cooking by now… and I’m hungry for some new homebaked skins for my sites! I’ve found out a bit more at CSS3.info – it’s got some previews of what the future will bring as soon as the browser manufacturers pull their fingers out and Web Standards becomes a norm.

I can’t wait until this happens – I’ve lot too many years of my life, wasting my time on cross-browser compatibility issues… The problem is that too many people still use IE instead of something like FireFox (ideally Safari) which makes building a website a much bigger problem that it really should be. Do you realise how much hair has been pulled out because of this? I’m pretty sure that percentage of baldness in Developers has increased large due the box model issue posed by cross-browser incompatibility. I hate Microshaft’s Internet Exploder… “You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”.

Once I get these themes down, then I’ll be putting some of the tips into my new Rough & Raw WordPress video tutorial section. If you’re lucky, I might get down to putting up some of the plugins to make your life simpler on there as well. We’ll see how it goes!

For the moment, some of us have sites to build don’t ya know!

PS: I don’t just mean my own site – there’s a new one I’m currently working on that’s pretty cool. As a working version of a website powered by WordPress and using it as a CMS, it’s actually pretty nice to look at!

Posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007.
Categories: FireFox, SEO, Tips, Website Design, WordPress Plugin, WordPress Themes.
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