Great Wordpress Plugins!
Warning: Absolute vodka geekery ahead!
A new theme at Nanyate?! will always be accompanied with some awesome new plugins. So here are the chosen ones.
1. @Reply with Comment Preview Plugin
Since I wanted to keep this design clean, I have reluctantly removed Wordpress Thread Comments and WP Paged Comments. It is now replaced with a Twitter-esque comment system, where you place @name to reply to comments. This plugin allows you to display the comment you’re replying to when you hover the @name. To use it on Nanyate?!, click on “respond to this comment” in the comment box you want to reply to. The HTML code that displays the @name will then be transposed in the comment text area.
I personally don’t think that this plugin’s potential is fully maximized, since it is not very friendly to those who have no knowledge of HTML. I would much prefer to see something like [@name] than a line of HTML code. (Plugin author Marcus Himmel, you hear me?) Also, the CSS and the XHTML are neither easily accessible nor valid for those who those customizing Web Standards Nazis. With all that said, it’s still an innovative plugin that might catch on in the near future – provided that it is improved upon.
2. Wordpress Mobile Plugin
With the advent of iPhone, HTC Dream and other mainstream internet browsing-centric phones, I think mobile web surfing will be the next big thing in the very near future, and likely the norm 2 – 3 years. So, it’s best to start catering to them now!
This plugin turns your site design into a mobile-friendly one, when it detects a reader is browsing from his or her phone. The CSS is fully customizable. In return, the author requests you put a small Google Mobile or Admob ad, and demands a small share of the revenue. Alternatively, you can pay the author 25 Euros to remove all advertising.
Mobile Nanyate?! from my HTC S730
Mobile Nanyate?! from my LG Viewty KU990R
There are alternatives out there, but most of them route to another URL and place ads on them. Until a fully free mobile plugin is released, I think this plugin is a pretty good deal.
3. Author Highlight Comments (not a plugin)
I wanted better control of my comment highlights, so I dug out a couple links from my rusting favorites folder “design resource”, and lookey what I found: Matt Cutt’s Highlight Author Comments
It’s better than the plugin Highlight Author Comments, which does not allow for flexible CSS-styling. And better than most other tutorials that determines the author based on email, which would clearly be very vulnerable to impersonations. Matt Cutt’s tutorial bypasses all that by using the Wordpress admin ID to determine the author. So unless the impersonator-to-be knows your password, you’re pretty safe.
Embarassing story: it took me a few hours to get this code working because I am PHP-stupid, and got so overwhelmed by the new code that I was completely oblivious to the error in my CSS. Long and boring story. Basically, it was my CSS that caused the problem, not the PHP.
Anyway, if you’re as PHP-stupid as I am, or afraid of tweaking your comments.php, please read this excellent step-by-step guide by Colin King; just don’t follow the author highlight tutorial given. Alternatively, feel free to ask this PHP-stupid web enthusiast, if you run into any trouble. Just leave me a comment or send me an e-mail.
Hope you found this Wordpress plugins review useful!
Thank You, Commenters!
Lastly, I’d like to thank those provided feedback to my layout. Theme Torii is now in Beta release. I’ve made the header marginally smaller, and changed the footer. Theme Torii now works on the following browsers: Firefox 3, Opera, Internet Explorer 6 + 7, Safari and Google Chrome.
17 Comments
New Theme Finalized, New Plugins & Code
Sorry for the lack of blogging and commenting. When I start designing a new theme, I will code and re-code until I’m happy with it. Looks like someone has a tendency for obsessive-compulsive disorder. 
Just kidding… I’m just a being a perfectionist.
Anyway, I’m proud to bring you the final release of Yukata Summer, which works across all browsers (except IE6.. for now) and all resolutions starting from 800×600. There are a few features I added that are worth mentioning since they may help Wordpress theme designers.
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Wordpress Dynamic Menu Highlighting
This highlights the page you are currently surfing on your navigation bar. For this site, the highlights extend to the sub-pages. For example, you are currently surfing this post, which is filed under archives, in turn ‘Archives’ in the navigation is highlighted. Check out the Wordpress Codex on Dynamic Menu Highlighting for the base code and Conditional Tags to customize this code to suit your needs – like I have done. -
Updated Wordpress Thread Comment
As some of you may already know, Nanyate?! uses WP Thread Comment to allow responses for comments. I think it’s a nifty tool that, although possibly takes away from the design, allows for conversation amongst the commenters and the author. Having a community of bloggers is the best part about blogging for me. So I will pay a great price to have everyone interact with everyone.
Anyway, this updated version now uses AJAX and has added a feature to email a commenter when the author replies so…Would you personally like to be notified when I reply to your comment? Thanks a lot! Your responses will really help me!
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Resolution Dependent Javascript
This is by far the coolest addition I’ve made to Nanyate’s layout!! By adding this javascript, my stylesheet will change according the resolution you are using. Actually if you even change the size of your window, you will see the changes between an 800px window and 800+px window. The 800px’ers have the background scrolling with a serving of dieted version of the content column. Everyone else has the background fixed.I adopted this Javascript as a compromise for the scroll-happy people who were complaining that having a scroll background hurt their eyes and the 800×600 resolutioners, who because of the height of their screen can’t see much of the background if it’s fixed. I normally don’t like catering for people’s surfing habits or the 800×600 resolution – especially since the Web 2.0 world has RSS feeds if you feel my design doesn’t suit your tastes. But I’ve made this compromise in the name of the illustrator’s pride. That flower took me many hours and 100+ layers to complete. I wasn’t going to throw it away for those with small resolutions and scroll-happy kids who I don’t expect to understand the pain of designing a translucent layout for all browsers and all resolutions.
Anyway, this javascript might be useful for those of you whose layouts are designed with 800×600 resolutions only or 1024×748 and above only. I have to admit, I tweaked the javascript little to suit my needs. So, just let me know if you need help with the tweaking.
And finally, I’d like to end this post with a big thank you goes to:
- JJ Magazine for the yukata inspiration
- My housemate for lending the magazine to me
- 72Quadrat.de for the layout inspiration
- Seishido.biz for the cherry blossom brush. It was $1 well spent.
- My subscribers, visitors and commenters whose presence and comments continue to inspire me to work harder on this site.
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