WordPress Responsive Theme: Mixfolio

by Rick Powell June 24^th, 2012 Leave a comment

If you’re a photographer who also blogs and you’re on WordPress.com, look no farther than Mixfolio.
Mixfolio is yet another responsive theme — one of those trends that is also a Good Idea — meaning that regardless of the platform or device your content is viewed on, it will still look good, adjusting size and formatting to fit its point of consumption — and that includes images.

Equally impressive are:

A clean look with a judicious use of white space throughout the theme.
A tabbed presentation of metadata in Gallery view condensing information very nicely.

Themes

WordPress Themes: Trends From Tumblr

by Rick Powell June 23^rd, 2012 2 Responses

WordPress theme designers are under the same kinds of market pressures that any other seller is under.
How do we sell our themes in a huge, competitive market?
How do we stand out from the hundreds of other themes and developers?
The designers of both paid and free themes have three choices to make. They can either innovate, build upon previous successes, either their own or others’, or they can follow trends.

Sometimes trends are good, or fun, like putting bacon in everything, but nonetheless probably bad for you.

Sometimes trends are just embarrassing, like mood rings or acid-washed jeans. (I’m dating myself.)

Plugins

Troubleshooting: The Case of the Missing Girl Gone Wild

by Rick Powell June 22^nd, 2012 Leave a comment

I have a friend who’s rather clueless about WordPress.
Let’s call him Mr. Where’s My Dashboard? Or, Mr. WMD, for short. (Although maybe I should call him Sir WMD since he’s British.)

Plugins

Sometimes They Come Back: The Best Plugins For Reviving Old Posts

by Rick Powell June 20^th, 2012 2 Responses

You’ve got a ton of great content. In fact, you’ve got more good blog posts than any reader could handle in one sitting, although she might want to.

So how do you help her?

Your homepage can show 10 or 12 posts at most and since you don’t want your blog to look like the front page of HuffPo (Do you?), you need some way to alert engaged readers to how much depth there really is to your site.

Here are some interesting WordPress plugins to help your readers dig deep.
Old Post Promoter

Miscellaneous

Design: Why You Should Be As Anal About It As Steve Jobs

by Rick Powell June 18^th, 2012 2 Responses

Design is a good idea.
Steve Jobs didn’t say that, but he could have and might have wished he did.

After he took over Apple in 1997, the company’s entire ethos could be summed up with that phrase.

While we could argue about what “good” means in terms of personal taste and aesthetics — and not everyone likes the look and feel of Apple products — what can’t be argued is that article, a.

A good idea.

One good idea.