Category — Project: blogs

The layout of this particular site is based on a “theme” provided for free at the WordPress site, called “Greed” and created by the Wpdesigner group. The attributes of the layout of interest to me are the three columns and the pre-formatted spaces for little info boxes surrounding the body, called sidebars (originally these spaces were envisioned to hold ads, hence the “Greed” theme). Once we settled on this theme, we have been interested in customizing content and color. It has been a learning experience because it is a carefully orchestrated assembly of HTML code and CSS, “cascade style sheets,” tied together using “php” programming language.

The gold on green banner (”John’s On-line Journal”) is a single *.gif formatted image generated, in my specific case, using Paint Shop v.X2. Simple HTML code could have been used to create this space (one would set a background color for the rectangle and a font size and color for the text). I had to peruse the code for the pages to determine how they provided this header/banner image and this is where I discovered a banner was provide by a *.gif image file.

I needed to adjust the other color schemes in the display, so I began to search for background color codes in the various sub-files that are used to build the graphical interface. I discovered that the colors for many of the rectangular spaces are not defined with HTML background color codes. They are *.gif format images in a 1 pixel wide by N pixels tall rectangular shape also generated in a image/graphics program; the very narrow looking graphic is then coded to repeat across a space, thus the background is a programmed image. If one can visualize: the black background bar at the top where the text “the blogJog at gregmaine.com” is shown is really a narrow black column a quarter inch high and 1 pixel wide repeated across the page from left to right, then you then get the idea …

This blog is powered by WordPress software loaded on our web-host at www.1and1.com; the site design is a modified theme originally designed by Wpdesigner. The WordPress package is a set of files loaded by FTP to our web-host and works with a MySQL database on the web-host. The WordPress software is entirely free open-source-license software; the Wpdesigner software is also free, open-source under the Creative Commons licensing scheme. We anticipate paying about $48 for one year web-hosting at 1and1.com, using their “Beginner” package.

This blog is the latest experiment in my effort to understand how to develop and maintain on-line publishing and communication tools. I have had a couple of google-Blogger sites for several years; one is used to share my photos with members of my family and a few friends; the other is a more traditional blog celebrating a place called the Smithfield Plantation in Maine.

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