Serendipity Blog

This is a short tutorial, it might not even be a tutorial really, but the information is solid. Let me give you a bit of background. Now and again we (Ceejay and I) do webdesign for small business, mostly 4 or 5 page websites.

An issue we frequently come across it that if we use static HTML pages, then either we need to update the pages when the site owner needs it, or the site owner needs to learn HTML to do this themselves.

Our latest project is a site that only has static pages, it also needs to be multilingual, and the site owner wants to be able to update the pages herself, and this is the sticky point, she doesn't want to learn HTML. She has her reasons, she's busy running a business and these days with WYSIWYG being so ubiquitous she shouldn't be forced to learn HTML. Read More

It's very rare that I get stumped when putting together a theme for a website, my skills are good enough to be able to fix most problems and because I know the terminology in most cases I can find something on Google when I need more.

However, there is something on my blog that is annoying the heck out of me and its due to the widgets in the sidebar and in my posts, and the way the browser renders the page. People on really fast connections might not notice it, but I do, so I thought I'd describe the problem and tell you how I've applied a band-aid to try and resolve it.

Here's the problem, this theme has a blue background. The posts and sidebars have a white background. When the page is rendered by the browser, the basic structure renders with no problem, but the delay in getting the widgets to do their thing means that by the time the browser has finished rendering the page, several seconds will have elapsed where the page doesn't display correctly. Read More

What a pleasant surprise this morning when I checked my stats and discovered the Organización del Guarderío, the umbrella organization for the Guardia Civil is using Serendipity and one of our s9y themes as for their new blog about the activities of the various guards. Wow, what a compliment!

Being very keen on protecting the environment we are both stoked beyond belief that the organization responsible for protecting the environment in Spain. They arrest poachers and protect the waterways and coastline and we can't tell you how gratifying it is to be part of the effort in Spain, albeit only having provided a template.

This one is for Harald, but any Serendipity user will be able to use the code so keep reading. The Add This Bookmark and Share Widget is the little box you see under my entries that pops up and let's users stumble or bookmark my entries.
[Hint] press the friggin' button right now! [/Hint]

So, the code needs to go into entries.tpl of the template you're using, just open this in your favorite text editor, and find the entry footer code for plugins which will look like this {$entry.add_footer}. Now add an HTML breakline <br /> then paste the following code;

{$entrydata.url|escape:url}
<!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN -->
<script type="text/javascript">
addthis_url = '{$entry.rdf_ident|escape:url}';
addthis_title = '{$entry.title|escape:url}';
addthis_pub = 'carlgalloway';
</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/addthis_widget.php?v=12" ></script>
<!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END -->

You need to replace 'carlgalloway' with your own 'Add This' username, so make sure you've created an account. Once you've done this, upload the new entries.tpl to your blog server and enjoy the rush of stumbles and bookmarks you'll get. Don't forget to press my button!!