The easiest way to embed Twitter in a website is to use any of the official Twitter Badges. The most flexible of these is the HTML/JavaScript widget which can be customized using CSS. This is the one I use here. It matches the look of my site seamlessly on the Wordpress sidebar. Make sure you put the script tag at the bottom of your website right above the body tag to prevent Twitter outages from stalling out your site.

If you prefer, you can use any RSS compatible plugin, such as Feedlist for Wordpress to display the Twitter RSS feed.

There is also a Twitter for Wordpress plugin. I haven’t tried it since it seems like the cut and paste code is so simple to implement, but it’s another option available.

If you encounter the “Tweet My Blog” plugin in your search for Twitter integration, avoid it. There is word that it is adware. Not great for SEO.

In other Wordpress news, Wordpress version 2.6.1 has been released. This is a bugfix release without much in the way features. If you or your users have experienced any of the problems mentioned, install it as soon as possible

Comments

• August 20, 2008, Nick writes: you added me to your contacts on flickr. how to contact you?

If you’ve posted your theme on the themes directory, please post it in the comments here!

If you haven’t gotten into theme making now might be a good time to start. You can now easily share your creation with the world.

Comments

• August 6, 2008, avi writes: hi,guys I think about it ,Anymore with 301 redirects and today’s modern internet browsers, I don’t feel that it is necessary any longer and I think sites look better without it.I start creating the includes that make up the theme. Pulling out the header portion to make header.php, and likewise for the footer and sidebar. Before I save my index.php again, my theme directory now contains the following files. Rocky Minnesota Treatment Centers avis last blog post..Role Of The Intervention Program In Alcohol Treatment In Ohio (www.treatmentcenters.org/minnesota)

photo credit: 7son75

What is a microblog? At the time of posting this, I have an experimental microblog on my site powered by Twitter (I have the username Sketchee). Microblogs are just short posts and updates limited to a very very small number of characters. You can text a quick thought right to your phone about whatever you like. I’ve been hearing about it everywhere. Everyone makes it seem so revolutionary, but it’s such a simple concept. It’ll take time before I get used to the idea and find out how useful it really is.

Why is this supposed to be interesting? When blogs first emerged, they tended to have diary and journal type of entries. While many of those blogs still exist, blogging as a medium has moved into topical and reader-centric type writing. Many of the twittery microblogs are being used to quickly get out the latest news and really useful information.

So join up, follow your friends, and when posting try to think about your audience. Some folks I thought to follow right away were Will Pate, Amber Mac, and Leo Laporte. And of course you might want to follow me too. I’m just starting out too, so drop me a note here or there if you’re using it and how your experience has been!

For more information if you really want to start making the most of it, take a look at The Beginner’s Guide to Twitter.

Here are some free graphic design programs that might just bring graphic design to the artists who can’t or don’t want to spend the money on the insanely priced corporate versions.

GIMP

GIMP is the most widely known Photoshop alternative. Most of the functions that you might use in Photoshop are implemented; you can crop, adjust colors, save as different file formats, use various filters and brushes. CMYK support is there but fairly weak and difficult to handle which may be completely unacceptable for most of us in the print industry. However for web design this won’t be a problem since it natively supports the RGB color space. Photoshop users may want to look into GIMPshop, a modification package which is intended to help GIMP mimic the Photoshop user interface. GIMP is available on Windows, Mac and Linux.

GIMP Screenshot. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

PDFCreator

This handy program adds itself to your Windows printer menu. Anything you print can be converted to PDF format or various other graphics formats for you to manipulate. Very handy to have on any system.

Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector editor similar to Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator. It uses the standard SVG format which makes it compatible with other graphics programs. The interface is streamlined and familiar since they focus on usability. It includes tutorials and tooltips too to ease your transition. They’ve reduced the number of palettes and all palette options are available as keyboard shortcuts. The interactive tutorials and simple interface make it very easy to start using, especially if you are familiar with other drawing programs. It’s definitely a good one to look into. Inkscape is available on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Screenshot of the Inkscape 0.46 user interface. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Scribus

I’m a heavy InDesign user and since it’s what I use at work, that’s not likely to change. It is good to know that there is an open source alternative for InDesign, Pagemaker, QuarkXPress or even the unfortunate Microsoft Publisher. It’s designed to be print ready and runs on Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows. If your printer accepts PDFs or any of the other formats supported by the program, you’re pretty much set. It’s designed to work with professional equipment in a prepress environment. If you’re interested in designing books, brochures, business cards this seems like a great idea. A lot of designers have Photoshop and/or Illustrator and attempt to use them for publication layout.

Scribus. Screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

KompoZer

KompoZer is a WYSIWYG html and css editor, think FrontPage or Dreamweaver. It’s based on the same rendering platform as Firefox. It’s meant to be easy to use for newcomers and non-technical users. Advanced users of Dreamweaver will miss some features, but everyone else can do well with the free alternative and save some serious money. It even creates nice and valid html adhering to the standard of your choice.

Kompozer screenshot provided by Wikimedia Commons

Wordpress

Wordpress gives designers an easy to manage system for implementing hugely complicated websites. It’s community creates many plugins, templates and widgets that give it a lot of weight. So I couldn’t leave it off of this list!

FontForge

FontForge is a nifty font editor that supports the very common TrueType, PostScript, OpenType formats among others. Besides allowing you to edit your fonts, it supports automatic format conversion and transformations. The documentation seems straightforward to follow so you can dive into developing your font project.

FontForge screenshot courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Open Source Fonts

Fonts are software too. And not too cheap either. Luckily Open Source efforts have stepped in to provide some relief. Typeforge is a project that aims to use Fontforge to create new fonts and provide support in helping designers of various levels create typefaces. You can help them out by simply using their fonts and providing feedback. DejaVu and Linux Libtertine are open source fonts that are freely distributable and free to use in your projects. Junicode is an open source Medieval style font that looks pretty versatile. Free UCS Outline Fonts collects a variety of open fonts of this type. Open Font Library collects public domain fonts.

A few endnotes

I still love the commercial design software out there. Open Source software is still in its infancy compared to commercial software that has been developed over decades. In many ways, these programs just can’t compete with that right now but in any case still serve an important niche market in our industry as an entry point for new designers, experiments for those of us who want to escape to something a little different and a as playground for innovation.

No one ever thought Quark would ever go away, now we have InDesign. While those are commercial products, Firefox is an open source project that is now a major player in the web browser world. There is also a ton of little open source programs that make my life easier, but aren’t necessarily design related. It’s kind of a cutting edge and fringe kind of thing sometimes and on the productivity side at other times.

One last thought, damn does the open source community really need to recruit some designers or what … These things too often have ugly programmer created technical looking skins that is just the biggest turn off in the world… Someone get on that!

Comments

• May 25, 2008, The Proliferation of Linux writes: Open Source Graphics Design Software... Sketchee has a nice round-up of various open source graphics design applications out there. So if you’re looking for alternatives to the likes of Adobe Creative Suite, read on. Included in the round-up are: The GIMP PDFCreator Inkscape Scribu...
• July 12, 2008, chebbie writes: nice tips mate! I was looking for such since I was seting up my Advertising agency and for legal purposes I was looking for open source software since it's not easy to start from scratch and needing to get the licence of adobe . a photoshop is around 690$, dreamweaver 599$, etc.. it's too much.
• August 14, 2008, Yanto writes: Good articles. Thanks for sharing. I'm starting to learn some open source desktop publishing, like Inkscape.
• October 13, 2008, Antonio writes: Great article! I think one thing that's keeping open source form competing is its image. As well as the UI problems some lesser known but still useful programs don't have an image about them. A good thing about the creative suite is that it has a brand image that works across each product. Maybe that's what open source needs; to offer programs as suites of applications. Antonios last blog post..Very happy blue bunny ([site])

1. AJAXed Wordpress

AJAX is one of the most important technologies of the Web 2.0 revolution. It enables you to use a web interface without reloads or clunky software plug-ins like Java or Flash. This plug-in gives your blog powerful AJAX features. You can choose and customize the features to your blog’s design. The in-line commenting system lets your users comment right from the homepage. They can even preview comments formatted using your CSS before posting. It’s as seamless as you need it to be.

2. WP-OpenID

This plug-in gives your users a log-in without any registration! With then power of the OpenID standard, you can have users sign in using a Yahoo, Livejournal or Google (Blogger) account. They probably have an OpenID account without even knowing it. It’s very simple to make your blog OpenID accessible. I haven’t yet worked out the details of making OpenID play well with the AJAXed WP, but I’ve come up with a reasonable compromise by using them both in different situations.

3. Batch Categories

This plug-in helps you manage your post categories easily. It’s a time saver in so many different situations. It will help you put your content right where your readers will expect it.

4. Broken Link Checker

Find and fix those broken links in your posts. I came across this plug-in after seeing so many daunting 404 errors in my site logs. This thing made it easier to find many of them and correct the problems. You’ll want your old articles to be readable and as useful as possible!

5. Hot Linked Image Cacher

Similar to the last plug-in, this one goes through and finds images hosted outside of your site. Then it copies them over to your server. This will prevent missing images down the line.

6. Sociable

This puts icons for various social networks onto your posts. You can choose from tons of different services to feature.

This article is a follow-up to “Wordpress Design Spice Up Tips”

Don’t forget!

You will have to apply everything you know about basic design principles. Great design is about putting things together in a way that makes sense. Organize the visual information. Never be afraid to re-read the basic design principles and look at your work critically no matter what your level is.

Make your own theme

The completely unstyled Basic 1.0 Wordpress Theme

Wordpress has themes and you could just download a ton of freely available already made themes. If you’re daring enough or already have some HTML or CSS knowledge, I’d suggest make you go forward and make your own theme. Starting out with a completely unstyled theme like basic 1.0, you can develop your own design with your own branding. The theme that comes with Wordpress has too much of its own design elements that can creep into your site. Ultimately it’s worth it if you want to have control over your site.

The web is dynamic, so keep adjusting your theme to make it look better and better over time. Consider design problems and solutions, don’t do things just because they are “cool”. Think in terms of interest and focus.

Design your category pages

Create or edit the category template to make it a site of its own! For people looking for topical information, your category pages can become information hubs. Suddenly you have a whole miniblog all about art or tv. This is a great chance to make a new entry point for your site that you may not have thought about before.

Your first stop should be the Category Template documentation. By default, the most basic design is just a boring listing out the categories in the same way as your date archives. Instead, create a category.php file that looks like a main index page design. The documentation also tells you how you can hand code a template for each category if you wish! Suddenly you can have a new site populated with your own blog’s content.

Read about adding images and text in Performancing’s Make Your Wordpress Category Pages More Interesting. That page has some great tips including adding category images and editorial content.

Style your comments

You can create style that helps you address your readers. Take a look at these tips for professional looking commenting

Enable OpenID

Wordpress OpenID Login

I know this isn’t really a design thing, but the OpenID is a usability element you might want to take a look at. The OpenId Plug-in is a quick install that lets your commenters log in with their open id url. You also may want to look into using your blog url as your openid. Using both of these methods together, you can login to Wordpress itself with OpenID.

Edit: Movable Type 3, never forget.

[If I can keep doing these regularly, I'll have to copy edit them after posting.]

It’s too bad because many entries were fairly active by actual commenters and now the depressed comment system is too difficult for real commenters. I’m following all of the guidelines given by SA in the Guide to fighting comment spam. This version of MT is also a server hog and my server has restricted my script use while it is installed until I switch to one of the light alternatives.

I’m considering moving Sketchee.com’s backend to Wordpress. The site needs a redesign. I just don’t know what I want it to look like yet.

Anyway, I took home my self portrait from class. Just a few touch ups and I’m done. After that, I have to start my landscape painting which is the last for the class. Finally, for Mother’s Day I’m doing a 9×12 picture of flowers for my mom on canvas board and I bought a 17×20 frame and mat. I don’t know if that’s the exact sizes… Anyway the frame was on sale at Michael’s which I noticed last week. My mom’s favorite thing is flowers so it was an easy thing. I’ll post all them when I’m done! The semester is almost over! Okay I admit this message is very much the same ideas as the e-mail I just sent to my friend Jay. I thought I’d come up with new ideas for the blogging but didn’t.