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Suds and Soliloquies
May 2nd, 2006I’ve offered to host a WordPress blog for Dave of Suds and Soliloquies. The first thing he needs to do is wander over to the WordPress Theme Park or WordPress Theme Viewer and choose a few themes. Let’s discuss, since some of them might be iffy for technical reasons. Otherwise, restate your thoughts in the comments please, so we can hash it out in public.
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Comments 
I posted about this on my blog too.
I haven’t had the chance to go through all of the themes. So far I don’t find many of them to be a good match with my aesthetic sensibilities. (Listen to me, geez.) But I haven’t hit up up the Theme Park yet.
There was one on page 7 of the theme viewer, called Saturday Night, that I liked. Simple and similar in feel to what I have now. Just to give an idea. More later as I have time.
Hey, here’s one you should consider:
http://webdesignbook.net/themes/two-columns/fleur-de-lys/
Where y’at?
A theme like Saturday Evening is probably not too difficult to implement. We can use it to get going.
Can’t use Fleur. I use it to demo customers.
The theme park seems to load faster and browsing goes quicker. I have enjoyed that site, even though it doesn’t have as many templates.
If we can agree on one that is okay, we can use it while you’re Kinderbloggin, and choose something that makes you jump for joy down the road. Then I can use the template as a starter for someone else.
I’m running the theme park, and it’s about to be closed. I’ve joined up with the themes.wordpress.net dev team, and the features from the theme park, and all the themes will be moved to themes.wordpress.net in the nearest future. Actually already 427 themes are added, and more will come
They will be easy browseable by tags etc.
Well, here are three more that looked interesting (in descending order of interest) from the soon-to-be-no-more Theme Park.
http://webdesignbook.net/themes/two-columns/autumn-ii/
http://webdesignbook.net/themes/two-columns/batavia-15/
http://webdesignbook.net/themes/two-columns/cub-reporter/
The cub reporter one is probably not well suited for my site, but the writerly side of me likes its simplicity and typewriter graphic.
Do you want me to reply here on this thread, or on the one where you mention our meeting of the other day in the Quarter?
I am digging through themes now and may have already stumbled upon one I like.
This one jumps out at me:
http://themes.wordpress.net/?view_type=slideshow&item_type=latest&page_number=37&count_per_page=12
Will it cause any coding issues for you?
How easily can the image be changed (NOLA Skyline)? I can create an image in Photoshop if you let me know the maximum size, preferred file format, etc.
Will I have fields on this page that I can edit directly or through Dreamweaver?
I have a team of several bloggers at Humid City, will there be any issues with having multiple posters?
By the way, thanks for the assist! I shall continue to look at other themes in case this one does not prove to be workable. I will also continue to communicate on this thread until informed of a need to do otherwise.
http://webdesignbook.net/themes/three-columns/foundation/
is another option I like. Again all the previous questions apply.
Loki – That theme is built on that photograph. The bay is used as the blue background for the text of the site. Can you find something else?
The Foundation theme linked in my second post would also be good. Failing that is there a way to insert a masthead photo and change of color scheme to the template GentillyGirl is using?
One other question, I already have subscribers through feedblitz to Humid City on blogger is there a way to redirect that or do I have to start fresh? If can save they few folks on there from having to resub I would love to.
The second design you chose uses jpg images for all the header text.
Changing them means creating a new image for every heading, which is a piss poor way to run a template. How they do WordPress generated headings, I don’t know.
There is no alternate text for the images that I can see, either, so Google can’t read your headings. Search engine antagonism is bad.
This is a really a junk theme. It looks pretty, but it isn’t driven by the WordPress engine.
Dave managed to magically choose three text based templates where images were neutral, not of a specific city, for example, and used solely for decoration, not to replace text.
I guess, in the future, I’ll have to offer from a stable of vetted themes. I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time.
At least I know what your going for here.
Right now my Internet connection is deathly slow. Otherwise, I’d pluck out a few themes that are in line with the asethetic of the two you’ve suggested. I’m sure we can find something, but my connection is unusable for the graphics heavy themes sites.
Can we pick this up tomorrow? Stop by for a beer after work? Or meet at Envie?
We can move the email subscribers, if they are not anonymous.
Loki, your patience and understanding is much appreciated as I work the kinks out of the process. I’m very eager to work with you on Humid City. It is my bad that I didn’t forsee unusable templates at the WordPress Theme Park.
No problem. It is a process. Good things take time. I will give you a ring if I can make it downtown today.
No magic in it… I prefer simplicity in design, for the most part.
Since the first stage of this process is “Kinderblogging,” on WP I would have no problem starting out with something like GentillyGirl’s site. I quite like the data organization on it, and using that one would allow us to get things up and running while I noodle out what I want the final look to be (once we reach that stage of course).
If I used that template how easy would it be to change the color scheme?
May be going downtown to pick up a check from ‘OZ, if I do I will drop you an line and we can meet over caffeine or suds, your choice.
Loki – Thank you for recognizing the kinderbloggin aspect of this. Yes, it’s well enough to get the new weblog going with posts and letting the search engines find it. I’ll choose something sedate. You are in the queue after Dave. Thank you.
I choose suds. Call me when you get down here. Let me know which side of the city you are on. There is plenty of Wifi on Frenchman.
Development Questions:
I already have Feedburner, Feedblitz and Technorati set up on the original Humid City. I also would like to have podPress, SiteMeter and ClutrMaps integrated (which looks pretty standard on the sites you have done). Would it expedite the process if I set up my accounts with them while you finish off Suds?
For WordPress Pages would it be helpful if I pre-developed the content for the pages? My research shows me that these are static pages, correct me if I am wrong.
Eventually my plans for Humid City will involve it growing substantially in size due to hosted media files for on demand content. How hard will it be to relocate the site to another hosting service down the line if needed?
How hard would embedding Flash into a template be? I already have a Flash developer I have been working with since the Silver Machine days to throw it together if I choose to go that path.
Email me an invoice for the domain registration whenever it is convenient and I will take caree of it. Thanks for being pro-active.
Just throwing things up as I think about them. Things are very non-linear for me right now for various reasons.
Flash on a blog is usability hell. We need to talk about that. The way it is used in the New Orleans market is unenlightened.
WordPress does allow for static pages. There is also the concept of a sticky post for a particular category, which accomplishes something similar.
No, let me do the setup. It doesn’t save anything to have you register sitemeter and only means I have to 15 minutes coordinating a 5 minute task.
Loki – We’re looking at Thursday.
Thursday launch? Sounds good to me. I will make a point of heading downtown tomorrow if there is anything you wish to go over in person.
I am very hip to the idea of having pages (as WordPress defines them). I do have a few things I would like to put in a static format.
I have also been doing a little digging in the Word Press documentation so as to accelerate the learning curve. It does not look hard.
Leave me a reply, email, or call me if you need to.
Alan, I have misplaced your card. Email me your phone number so I can give you a ring later. I will be downtown dealing with WWOZ and other things for awhile this afternoon. I was thnking a quick coffee at Envie and some face time over the launch.
george.williams.iv (at) gmail (dot) com
Question: will youtube.com embeds work on wordpress? I am planning on using them (already have a few times) a good bit and would prefer to embed them rather than link to the videos. You get more play that way…
Thanks!
Yes. WordPress and YouTube place nice.
I’m almost done with Suds and Soliloquies.
I’m going to use a starter template for Humid City, and four other web sites that are starting.
We’ll have more than enough training and production to tend to. At least, I hope you’re on board with that. We need to chat about music again, too.
FYI. Kuffner is go on WordPress at WWOZ.
Excellent! Glad to hear about WWOZ!
Keep me posted on launch and intitail setup.
Let me know about what I can do with training and production, I will carve out some time, but I am currently unsuree how much I can commit. May be getting a contract to polish and maintain some sites for UNO so I need to take stock and organize my schedule. I will make some time…
Looking forward to getting the neww site rolling. I am setting up some youtube stuff for the launch.
I see the initial work is proceeding. When things are set up let me know and I will edit the about page and preparee my intial posts.
When setting up the Pages I would appreciate a seperate links/resources page in addition to the about page if its not too much trouble.
Will I be able to directly edit the html of the static pages?
Will catch you later this afternoon, have to go run some errands (cats will eat me alive if I dont go get food for them…)
Query: Thses plug ins have caught my eye. I have listed them in order of importance (The LJ crossposter is a high priority for me.) Will these (or analogs thereof) be compatible with what you are already implementing?
Live Journal Crossposter
WP site posts are automatically cross posted to LJ
http://ebroder.net/livejournal-crossposter/
PhoneBlogz
Phone in voice posts
http://www.phoneblogz.com/api/wordpress.php
Cool Player
Alows posting of any media
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/MultiMedia
XD Forums
Forums
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Forums
Sideblog
Puts asides into the sidebar collumn
http://katesgasis.com/2005/10/24/sideblog/
Del.icio.us Bookmark This
Add bookmark in Del.icio.us link to posts or sidebar
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/2005/06/21/delicious-bookmark-this-wordpress-plugin
Loki
I moved your plugin list over to Think New Orleans with the exception of XD Forums for two reasons.
About point two. I’ve seen numerous threaded bulletin board systems thrown up since the storm. They almost always languish unused. People don’t want to go online to chat with each other in New Orleans, and if they do, they go to NOLA.com.
I stay away from forums, because I want to convince community leaders to publish information. I want community leaders to commit resources to writing and to conducting conversations.
Most people who throw up forums hope that New Orleanians will show up and start typing up a bunch of articles for them. The eyes light up. Oh, I’ll create a forum and it will be bustling with information and activity.
Then when it sits there with three posts in six months, they assume that the web is a failure.
In fact, if you agree, help me collect a list of dead web forums. I can think of a few already.
http://no3r.com/forum.php
http://thinkloisiana.com/
Whenever you get the chance give me a timeframe on humicdcity.com going live. I am working on the about page text and a few other things…