phidauex

Yeah, this is mostly just a personal pet peeve list, its not really identifying trends. In fact, in some cases two people are claiming to notice completely opposite trends. Someone complains about people not using a:visited on long lists of links, and someone else complains about everyone using a:visited. If it was really some sort of trend instead of just little personal preferences, then we’d be seeing the same thing.
I think that, in general, increasing knowledge of CSS means that web usability and accessibility has gone UP, not down. You can use CSS to seriously mung up a website and make it hard to use, but it is also easy to use basic CSS to make a website very easy to use and very accessible, and thats what most people choose to do. The web has become a lot more friendly in the last few years, partially because people are experimenting with their weblogs, and then filtering those developments out into the rest of the web world. I don’t get bent out of shape when I see a ‘Valid XHTML’ link and the website isn’t valid because of one or two little errors, because at least they know that validation is in some way important. Three years ago it was rare to see a validation link, let alone any knowledge at all of standards. Let the weblog world find out what works (and what doesn’t, like we are talking about in this thread) and then the ‘rest of the world’ can benefit from our wanton experimentation.
peace,
sam

I’m not sure what his reasons are, but I can see favoring this technique when truly unique permalinks are needed. There was some hubbub about using permalinks as Atom IDs, and the general consensus was that you shouldn’t, because permalinks, based on titles, are subject to change. Well, ID numbers can also be subject to change as you change blog systems, and can be confusing or require lots of translation tables between number systems. However, the time stamp is unique. You aren’t going to make two posts in one second, and there is no reason to go back and change the time stamp later, like you might do with a title.
Anyway, I think it does sound like a pretty good way to do permalinks, and you could make a good case for using that permalink as an Atom ID, which would be handy.
peace,
sam

I like the newspaper’esque design. I once had a good friend who’s website was a very faithful reproduction of an old-fashioned gazette style paper, but with modern navigation. Very classy.
If you wanted to really pimp the newspaper look, I’d consider a background color of a very light tan/grey color to simulate newsprint, and perhaps even a subtle background image of newsprint, maybe with a little crinkling on the edges. You could probably get a big ole sheaf of newsprint at an art store, then crumple the edges a bit like a paper, and then scan it and make the background out of it.
Then again, maybe you want to keep the newspaper look on the downlow, then a background image could be overkill.
Anyway, nice site. In general, it might be nice to have the content column a touch wider, but I like the overall look.
peace,
sam

I used to use SSI, then when I wanted more functions than SSI could provide I switched to PHP, but to avoid breaking links I just changed the handling of .shtml to PHP instead of the server parsing engine, so my pages are still .shtml, even though they are PHP.
But seriously, it is a good idea to use includes for header/menu/footer information, especially if you have static pages, or semi static pages, or think that maybe someday you might have those things. Like using a linked CSS file, it is nice to be able to make a single change and have it affect an entire site.
peace,
sam

Thanks allusion, for the link to variables available inside the loop. That will help me out a lot!
Thanks for the clarification and continued discussion, its helpful. I agree that having to learn PHP to do basic design changes is a bit disheartening if someone doesn’t already know PHP, but I think the user friendlyness is something that will improve with time.
Its common to have to trade power for user friendliness, but good testing can provide a common ground that lets people who are willing to learn a little do a whole lot, which is a point things are reaching now, especially as we get more documentation.
peace,
sam

I don’t believe the GPL can enforce an attribution requirement. There are other licenses that can however, like Creative Commons licenses. With GPL you can modify the source, and continue to happily use the software. That link to this site is just another part of the source you can modify/remove.
That said, its common courtesy to link back to the people who gave you the ability to do the cool stuff you are doing. Not a requirement, but just good ethics.
If you wanted to be nice, you could make a free-will donation to the WP project (using the donate link at the top of the page). I’m sure that would absolve you of any bad karma from removing the link. 😉
peace,
sam

Its better for me now. I’m using the regular download version of 0.8, and while I had lots of problems earlier, I just left the computer for a few hours, I’m back, and all my symptoms are gone. Strange.

Yes, its very odd… It seems to take forever to scroll, though the page loads fast. Also, typing this comment is incredibly laggy. IE doesn’t seem to be expressing these symptoms. Weird stuff.