So far I've been holding back writing and promoting my blog and asked myself Should I Migrate to WordPress MU?. Since then I made the decision to Migrate to WordPress MU and then finally Successfully Migrated to WordPress MU.

I've been showing this Christmas Days theme since 21 Nov 2007 and believe me I really got itchy when looking at it now. Perhaps it is a good choice for a start up blog for a simple look and feel while giving people a clue that Christmas is coming. However, theme become obsolete now. The themes from 7 Free Christmas WordPress Themes 2007 are much better than this.

The New Design

New Year is coming! I need some theme that can meet some very strict requirements. Before continue reading, please open Copy Blogger and Daily Blog Tips in new windows so that you can understand what I mean without having a headache. I want to make my blog look similar to those.

Header

Header should include

1. the logo/site name,
2. site slogan,
3. search box (wordpress or Google)
4. RSS feeds (nofollow links)
5. A horizontal menu that show pages by slug, not full title.
6. Sub-pages should go in drop down, or not shown at all.
7. And other must-have features that the designer thinks fit.

The header should have at least the following characteristics:

1. be lower to save space and possibly allow some 728 banner ad under it. Perhaps 100px height?
2. uniquely identify my blog from others.
3. encourage people to subscribe to my feeds.

The Body/Main content

The body should contain:

1. The Page title
2. Whatever content a blog should have

The body should have the following attributes

1. be at least 468px to fit that size of banner ad and photos.
2. preferably 480px or 500px.
3. Blockqoute should be blockquote.
4. Minimal modification to default styles.

The Side Bars:

1. One sidebar on the left to display most relevant stuff like pages and categories.
2. Two side bars on the right to display relevant links or advertisements. Possibly 150px wide to display 150x150 buttons.
3. A side bar below those 2 sidebars, which is as wide as both of them, to display longer links.
4. Should look professional while saving as much space as possible.

Widgets

Who dare to take a big challenge with widgets? If I will definitely break my way out to design some extra widget place holders such as:

1. the sidebars,
2. the whole pane right below the header,
3. above the post title, OR below it but above the fold
4. below the post content, but before the comments
5. below the comments, before the footer
6. the footer, so that I can change footer

Why? I hate modifying the themes to insert additional content. Do you? Drupal, DotNetNuke and most other Content Management System (CMS) have those, why the most famous one WordPress don't? Too much limitation cause lots of suffering for bloggers.

Every day I waste time on searching for plugins to do very simple job for my blog, still couldn't get satisfied. Then, I need to modify the themes. Then, I need to modify the plugins. They say WordPress require little tech knowledge, my use of it prove the opposite.

Additionally if possible, the theme should have options in the WordPress back-end Options page.

SEO Features

I'm not yet an expert in SEO, yet. However I do have some basic requirements to meet elementary level of SEO:

1. The site name must not be H1 for any pages other than home page.
2. Every page must have a H1 title, including archives, tags, pages, posts, categories, search etc.
3. All styles should be in external CSS file.
4. The lighter the better, so no unnecessary class attributes, use the ID attribute and nested HTML default classes to format elements instead. Example: Don't define a class "PostContent" when in fact the Content is under <div id="content"> already.
5. The main content goes first, then the side bars. No excuses for putting right sidebar in front of the main content.
6. JavaScript for menu? Good idea, but the menu must be written in HTML and dynamic by JavaScript, not use document.write.
7. Ajax? yes another good idea, but please make sure only for sidebars.

The Styles

Technically knowledgable about CSS in advanced level, I would like to have to following styles:

1. The less classes, the better
2. Use ID and HTML element ID thoroughly
3. Smartly format image and objects depend on alignment (barely seen).
4. The less images the better, but must have enough to make the site look neat and nice.
5. The images need to be optimized over 10KB is not a good file size. Consider the dial-up users and the 10s effect.

Am I too tough? The list above is only half of my requirements. If you think you are good enough, go ahead and take the credit. If you up for the challenge?

Free Custom Blog Design

Thanks to Quan Quach from BlinkDagger for writing Win a Free Custom Wordpress Design! I come to realise that Brian Purkiss from plainBETA Design and Blogging is giving out a Free Custom Wordpress Theme

Do I meet the requirements?

Contest Requirements

1. Must be a Wordpress powered blog: OK
2. The desired layout must be a minimalist, web 2.0, like design: OK
3. The blog must be something that I like: OK, but does that mean your friend is reserved?
4. No logo design can be involved: OK, but does that mean you can't do graphic?
5. ‘Designed by’ link must remain in the footer: OK, if it is good then credit is reserved. After all that's the contest all about.
6. The blog already needs to be in existence: OK, you are reading it.

How to Enter

1: Write a post on your blog linking to this post ’selling’ your blog to me: Done

-Why should I pick your blog?

Answer:

1.1 Would you like to design some blog that set its goal to 10,000 subscribers? I'm thinking of expanding my blog to pagerank 6+. Wouldn't you like to get a link back from so high PR site? Then my blog is for you.

1.2 Would you like to design a blog of a fellow web developer and take some nice credit from doing so? Then this blog is for you.

1.3 Would you like to give a hand to someone who help other bloggers and web master live on his blog? Then this blog is foryou.

1.4 Would you like to take some high-requirements challenge and get well-known, instead of designing some simple blog just to throw your business card? Then this blog is for you.

1.5 Would you like to be recognized as a top WordPress designer and get known by the WordPress community? Then this blog is for you.

-What do you want the design to look like?

Answer:

As mentioned above. But I'd love to hear your expert advices if they work better.

-Remember, I have to like your blog in order to pick it. So what’s so special about it?

Answer:

At this stage it is not so special. I only help other bloggers to become better bloggers. I love to help others. So if you help me you are giving a hand to other bloggers, too.

I'm sure my requirements are higher than other bloggers, so will you take the challenge?

2: Contact me with a link to your entry.

Answer: OK, I will contact you after this.

What's Next

If Brian decide not to design my blog, I will end up spending some time choosing some free theme and customize it for my own use. Of course I will make it meet the requirements I set above. If I do, I will distribute it. If Brian does, I might ask him to let me distribute, too. So stay tune for the result.

Update 28/12/2007: I realize some requirements maybe too high for a standard designer, so I don't expect to find or get those immediately.

Meanwhile, Happy New Year and Holidays to anyone who have. If you don't celebrate New Year in your country, why not celebrate it online?

• enable JavaScript for WordPress MU post;
• remove WordPress MU HTML filter; or
• enable advanced HTML tags and attributes, like embedded object, flash, video, etc?

I did. After migrating from WordPress 2.3.1 to WordPress MU 1.3.1 I lost all the JavaScript code from my posts and pages. I also experience few very serious issues, which I will write about later on.

The Search

I've tried to search for solution for few times. I found this post A look at WordPress filters. Disable wpautop() on post formatting. by Leonid Mamchenkov. It was not a correct solution for this problem. That post only point out how to disable the automatic insertion of <p> (paragraph tag), not enableing javascript and advanced HTML tag and styling.

Finally I found a a quick and easy solution to solve the issue. The credit goes to Robert Mao, who wrote Get rid of boring WPMU’s post html/javascript filtering…, which pointed directly at the problem and give the solution. I follow what Robert said and found that the information on "how to use Javascript" from WordPress Codex is really misleading. It is complicated and is not a solution for this problem.

The Solution

What Robert pointed out, I found valid. You can do this too, here is how you can remove the crazy WordPress MU filter for post to enable JavaScript and advanced HTML:

1. Open file wp-includes/kse.php in your WordPress MU folder
2. Locate line 717 to find:
   add_filter('content_save_pre', 'wp_filter_post_kses');
3. insert # before add_filter and you should have this:
   #add_filter('content_save_pre', 'wp_filter_post_kses');

Upload the file and replace the official WordPress MU wp-includes/kse.php file.

You may want to edit the file directly on your host, it's all up to you. You may also want to make a plug in to disable the remove the filter.

What's next?

I tried to create a filter similar to what his suggested but it didn't work. This is the code I used in the filter:

remove_filter('content_save_pre', 'wp_filter_post_kses');

How about you? If you are a WordPress expert coder will you make a plugin to disable some annoying filters? If yes please give me a ping back or a comment to let me know.

Update 05/04/2009: I made the plugin, here is the link to the download page: Less Filter Plugin for Wordpress

• How do I delete AdSense Ad Unit from the Manage Ads page?
• How do I remove AdSense unit from my web page?

How do I delete AdSense Ad Unit from the Manage Ads page?

It's written in this Official Google help page How do I delete an AdSense unit? that you can NOT delete the ad units from your Manage Ads page, but hide it. You can hide ad unit by following 2 steps:

1. Remove the unwanted ad unit's code from all your web pages to stop it from gaining impressions.
2. Wait 7 days for the ad unit to disappear from your Ad Manager.

How do I remove AdSense unit from my web page?

Answer:

The process is easy if you remember where you place the code. Otherwise you will need to find it. Follow these steps:

1. Open the file for the web page you placed the code in.
2. Locate the AdSense JavaScript code that you pasted into the page earlier. It look like this:

   <script type="text/javascript"><!--
   google_ad_client = "pub-01234567890123456";
   //120x240, vertical homepage
   google_ad_slot = "0123456789";
   google_ad_width = 120;
   google_ad_height = 240;
   //--></script>

   <script src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js" type="text/javascript">
   </script>

3. Remove the above code from your web page.

Update on 22 Dec 2007: Now you can actively Hide and Show AdSense Units.

On Tuesday the 25th of September 2007 I was having this annoying bug. I was testing my website using FireFox (my main browser). I found out I couldn't send my page description to Digg using the following Digg JavaScript variable:

digg_body = document.getElementsByName("description")[0].content

While Internet Explorer, my 2ndary browser worked fine with it.

Debug Process:

The debug process was done using the alert statement to show the object.

alert (document.getElementsByName("description")[0].content);

When the page is loaded in Internet Explorer 7, the alert statement shows a pop up message containing the page description. While in FireFox it return NULL. I couldn't see anything wrong with the syntax. After many hours trying to fix, the problem was actually too simple. In the HTML page I got

<meta name="Description" content="some text...">

Instead of

<meta name="description" content="some text...">

Debug Result:

The only different here is the "D" in the actual code, as apposed to the "d" as what the FireFox JavaScript was looking for.

The cause of the problem is that, the meta Description tag was placed automatically by the ASP.NET code, so I had to modify the JavaScript instead.

Lesson learned:

FireFox is very strict in JavaScript casing. So watch out for the bug similar to this and save you some time wondering what's wrong with the "perfect" code.