Category Archives: WordPress

Cutline Default Sidebar Doesn’t Retain Formatting When Customized

Posted on February 24, 2007 | 2 comments

While reading another Worpress.com blog using the Cutline theme, I noticed that the formatting of the sidebar widgets was slightly different from those on my site. Notably, the search widget was titled “Search It!” and the search box contained dummy text that said “To search, type and hit enter”. Additionally, the Recent Entries widget displayed the date of each post.

The customizable widgets available for the Cutline theme cannot be configured to match that formatting. After some research, I found that this formatting is available only to the default Cutline sidebar, with no custom widgets attached.

Cutline Default Sidebar

The screenshot to the right displays what my blog’s sidebar widgets look like using the default sidebar. (There is a minor glitch in that the date for my Claiming this Blog on Technorati post is cut off).

Although I like the formatting of the default sidebar, I think the default widgets are insufficient, and so I will be keeping my customized layout. It’s a shame (although admittedly a minor one) that the formats can’t be used on a customized sidebar. I suppose that is the result of the limitations needed for the theme to function as a hosted theme on WordPress.com.

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Posted in blogging, cutline, themes, WordPress

Switched to WordPress Cutline Theme

Posted on January 4, 2007 | 5 comments

I wasn’t satisfied with the appearance of the default theme, Kubrick, that WordPress.com implemented on my blog. I thought that it looked cramped with the small font and leading. The grey background on the sides of the blog highlighted the narrow body, and made the page appear very inefficient at high resolutions.

Fortunately, WordPress.com allows authors to choose from a variety of themes in order to customize the look of their blogs. Unfortunately, though, they do not provide a menu of each theme’s features to aid in selection. The only mechanism they give for reviewing a theme is for an author to actually implement it on their blog and explore its features.

Frustrated by this, I searched and found one WordPress.com blogger, engtech, who took it upon himself to start reviewing WordPress.com themes and publish a matrix of each theme’s features. I’m very impressed with what he’s done so far. His matrices are very comprehensive.

I took an opportunity to scan through engtech’s reviews, and based on them I decided to switch my blog the the Cutline theme. I like it’s simple look. I like the body text font, Georgia, and I like that it’s larger than Kubrick’s font. There is more leading in the body text. The background is all white, creating a very open, welcoming feel. I’m not yet using some of the more advanced features like widgets, CSS, and such, so I’m not sure if Cutline will suit my purposes down the road. For now, though, I think it’s fine.

Now I just need to find something to replace the default header image…

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Posted in blogging, themes, WordPress

Creative Commons Logo Stands Alone

Posted on January 4, 2007 | Leave a comment

I decided to remove the blurb beneath the Creative Commons logo in my sidebar. The blurb said:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.

This statement is pretty wordy, and looked awful in the narrow sidebar. So I deleted it. It states in words the information that the logo tries to relay, but readers can get an explanation of the logo simply by clicking on it anyway.

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Posted in blogging, copyright, Creative Commons, WordPress

Displaying my Creative Commons License in the WordPress.com Sidebar

Posted on December 27, 2006 | Leave a comment

Having chosen my Creative Commons license, I then needed to display it on my blog. I felt that the WordPress sidebar would be the most appropriate place.

The Creative Commons people give authors a nice little graphic to link to that is customized for each particular type of license. Here’s the logo for my license:

Creative Commons License

I thought that it should be straightforward to put the logo in my blog’s sidebar, but that proved to be a little optimistic.

The Creative Commons website generates some code for authors to copy and paste into their own site in order to display the logo. The website also has some instructions for pasting the code into a few popular blogging packages, but WordPress is not one of them. Unfortunately, it’s not a simple cut-and-paste job to use this in the WordPress.com sidebar.

The raw code has a lot of data that can’t be used on WordPress.

In order to work in a WordPress sidebar widget, the code between, and including, all instances of <!- and -> should be deleted. This action simplifies the original code to:


<a rel="license"
href="http://…snip…">
<img alt="Creative Commons License"
style="border-width: 0"
src="http://…snip…"/></a><br/>
This work is licensed under a
<a rel="license" href="…snip…">
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License</a>.

Still, though, this code would not display the logo in my sidebar.

I am by no means proficient with HTML. Still, I noticed that the alt and style modifiers for the img tag were before the src call. I thought that was backwards, so I reversed them. I also thought the style modifier was unnecessary, so I deleted it.

My final code was:

<a rel="license"
href="http://…snip…">
<img src="http://…snip…"
alt="Creative Commons License" /></a><br>
This work is licensed under a
<a rel="license" href="http://…snip…">
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License</a>.

This worked!

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Posted in blogging, copyright, Creative Commons, WordPress

PracticeBlogging.com is Active

Posted on December 25, 2006 | Leave a comment

The blog’s domain mapping is now in effect. PracticeBlogging.com now links directly here.

I was mildly surprised that WordPress.com charges a $10 yearly fee to implement the domain mapping. The fee is not mentioned in the FAQ article, or in the support forum post that announced the mapping feature.

I’m not upset that there is a fee, mind you. I just feel as though WordPress.com should disclose it somewhere where blog authors can see it prior to actually starting the mapping process.

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Posted in blogging, domains, WordPress

Domain Registration at 1and1.com

Posted on December 23, 2006 | 4 comments

I decided to register a domain name and point it to my blog. WordPress.com recently implemented domain mapping, and I figured that domain names are so inexpensive now that I might as well try it out.

I used PCNames to check if practiceblogging.com was available. Lo and behold, it was. PCNames is merely a lookup tool for seeing if a domain is available. The site direct links to one of several registrars for performing the actual registration. Current registrar options include Yahoo, GoDaddy, 1&1, and several others.

I would have liked to have registered directly with WordPress.com, as they do offer that service. They don’t, however, offer a private registration feature at this time. Private registration allows someone to register a domain without their name and address being publicly listed. Private registration is sort of the internet’s equivalent of having an unlisted phone number.

I first tried registering with GoDaddy. I’m not sure why. Their advertising, I guess. It turned out to be a bad experience. The link from PCNames worked well enough, but I couldn’t find a way to add private registration to my order. I backed out to their home page and tried starting from scratch. I was finally able to add it to my order, although it wasn’t exactly a smooth process. I don’t like their site design. It’s very cluttered, and they go with the information overload approach. I think it’s probably to try to get people to sign up for as many extras as possible. I got as far as the account registration page, but I couldn’t go any further. I entered all my information, but every time I pressed the Continue button to advance to the next step an alert would pop up stating that I needed to fill out all the fields marked as required. I tried repeatedly to continue, but couldn’t. I finally gave up.

I registered with 1&1 instead. That went much more smoothly. It also turned out to be less expensive. Domains at 1&1 are only $5.99 per year, and include private registration. Compared to GoDaddy’s prices of $8.95 per year plus $4.99 for private registration.

Practiceblogging.com isn’t working at the moment. Getting the domain activated and then mapped to WordPress.com appears to take up to a few days. That’s a little frustrating, but it’s not critical.

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Posted in blogging, domains, WordPress