Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
3
Although we all think that our blog visitors have absolutely nothing else to do than give full atten-
tion to our blog, they might be visiting it while waiting for a file to download, while watching a
video clip, or as a reference for an email or document they're writing. A theme that gracefully
adjusts to sharing the screen can be a big plus.
Widgets and Other Features
Widgets are small pieces of code that drive the content of small boxed areas you put in a sidebar of
your blog. Widgets can do many things, such as provide links to your most recent posts, provide
links to pages in your blog, show recent posts from another blog, and so on. In Figure 3.3, shown
later in this section, the Archives, Categories, and Blogroll areas in the sidebar are all widgets.
Whether widgets are allowed in a theme is a crucial feature for you as a reader of this topic. Later
in this chapter, we tell you how to choose from among available widgets. In Chapter 9, “Adding
Graphics to Your Posts,” we show you how to modify certain widgets using HTML. However, to
take advantage of the power of widgets, you need a theme that accommodates them.
Fortunately, nearly all of the themes available through WordPress.com support widgets. Some have
more interesting widgets preinstalled than others. However, with this topic in hand, you'll be able
to find the additional widgets you need and install them, so all you need in a theme is basic support
for widgets, which is nearly always present.
A few WordPress.com themes are additionally customizable as to their colors or even their number
of columns or other theme options. Themes with this kind of flexibility are very promising for your
blog, allowing you to redesign your blog's look within a theme; investigate them carefully among
your options.
Many themes have custom headers, meaning you can put any image in the top area. In a negative
sense, you need this flexibility if the theme you favor has, for example, dolphins in it, but your blog
is about how to crush large rocks with bulldozers. If it's a custom header, just replace the dolphins
with rocks and bulldozers and you're off.
In a positive sense, custom headers give you a helpful element of flexibility without making you
play designer too much. Although you can only take this so far—your custom header can't clash
strongly with the rest of the blog's look—it's a very nice stepping-stone into changing the look of
your blog without having to pay for a CSS upgrade or leave WordPress.com behind entirely before
you're ready.
Microformats are special HTML codes that denote specific kinds of data, such as addresses. If this
is important to you, choose one of the few themes that support microformats, or use a CSS upgrade
or the WordPress software to support it yourself.
Right-to-left (RTL) text support is a crucial issue for bloggers who work in languages that use RTL
scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, and others. Ideographic languages such as Chinese and
Japanese can be written left-to-right, right-to-left, or top to bottom—often all mixed on the same
page! This is clearly recognized as an important issue by Automattic, the owners of WordPress, as
all of the themes available in WordPress.com have RTL text support.
As an example of some of these points, Figure 3.3 shows the Google Voice Daily blog belonging to
one of the authors (Smith). The blog is functional enough, and uses the traditional blue fade found
in the WordPress default theme, Kubrick, and many others. It does include a (slightly) customized
header, at least.
