Pro Blog Design

Automatically grabbing thumbnails from posts is cool. But what about automatic excerpt lengths that match the height of those photos?

I recently redesigned a blog for a client and it had an automatic thumbnail for each post, with a fixed length excerpt beside it. It was okay, but our client didn’t like the fact that it was “cutting” his pictures off sometimes. Our goal then had 3 steps:

• 1 – To set a thumbnail’s height proportional to the original picture, so that we would not cut parts of it off.
• 2 – Use this height value to display excerpts about the same size.
• 3 – Set up an automatic Lightbox on images that are too large for the content area.

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With WordPress 2.7 came the post_class function. This gives a set of CSS classes to a post, depending on what’s in the post (e.g. based on what category it is in). The code that you use in your template to use this is simply like this: 1 <div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class(); ?>> While [...]

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WordPress can be very simple to work with, but it can also be very complicated. The system can be used to do just about anything you like.

In this post we have collected together a range of tutorials that span from the very first things you need to know, like working with the loop, to much more complicated tricks, like setting up post thumbnails on your home page.

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Web design is complicated. There’s a heck of a lot to learn. Typography, usability, color theory, the list goes on…

When you’re starting out, it can all seem overwhelming and even when you’ve been round the block a time or two, there’s still lots to learn.

We have collected together 26 full tutorials from the web that take you through the process of designing a blog, from scratch.

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There are more different styles of design out there than we could ever hope to master. But as designers, we never want to become locked into one way of doing things.

Below we have collected 35 of the best tutorials for all aspects of User Interface design, with a very wide variety of styles. Follow a tutorial from a style you’ve never tried before and you’ll have taken your first step towards it.

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WordPress is more than just a blogging tool. It can be used as a Content Management System (CMS) for many different purposes. It has a built in system for most things you would have to code yourself, or pay for an expensive custom application. With a little creativity, you can use basic features to power almost anything you want.

One of the most important things to a website with any hopes of establishing a user connection is having user accounts.

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Have you ever seen blogs where the popular posts, top commentators, and blogroll are all tabbed into one small area? Those blogs are using DOMtabs.

DOMtabs is a free script and by using the guide below, its quick to install. I’ve also created a simple stylesheet that you can use to easily restyle your DOMtabs.

You can see DOMtabs in action in the sidebar here on Pro Blog Design. It is a very user-friendly way of saving space on the page, and cutting your clutter.

Lastly, this guide is written with WordPress in mind, but the script can be used anywhere. If you’re on another platform, try applying the steps to your own platform, or read the help on the script’s site, and comment here for help if you need it.

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