I finished up another custom WordPress design today, this one for Kailani over at An Island Life. I have a little tweaking to do but overall it’s complete and so cute I just couldn’t wait to send you over to have a peek.

She basically requested a facelift on the design she had previously – separating posts, getting cute and creative in the comments, organizing and displaying her menu better. I threw my artistic touch into some custom graphics as well as a few stock images, updated her existing header, and the end result is a really fun summery beach theme. It was such a creatively inspired project, I had a lot of fun with it! Head over and toss her a beach ball!

Update: After I unbreak the search form. D’oh.

I just finished up this design for Nancy, this is her photoblog, 525600 Minutes. I did a whole bunch of stuff on this project, starting with getting her upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. Then I did a quick and easy installation of Johannes amazing wordpress photoblog plugin, YAPB, and created a custom design for it. Similar to my own photoblog, it’s got the date archives and navigation making it really easy to browse either by date or category.

I added some custom templates and other fun plugins to make things really much more functional – these are really nice ones, if you’re looking to do something similar I highly recommend them:

• Custom posts per page
• Exec php
• Headline images (I gave her a special font from my own collection.)
• Imp Links for that really cool links page formatting.
• Live calendar
• Preview Frame (a must have for WordPress 2.2)
• WP-slimstat, like shortstat, only cleaner and takes up less room in your database.

A few custom graphics, and one purchased from iStock, and she’s ready to start photoblogging!

I love YAPB.

They are too cool to go bad, in my own humble bloggy opinion. I had a formatting problem with the More Smilies plugin that just went totally south when I upgraded to a newer version of the plugin code. It hates the new version of WordPress (2.2) and will. not. play. nice.

The support in the forum – well, they tried. I know people like this plugin. This post is for you, in all honesty. If you have the more smilies plugin, it will not work in 2.2, and so far, no one is supporting it (not even the plugin author).

So, it’s gone. Disabled. That was scary, but I’m okay now. Why? Because I found this other smiley plugin, Custom Smileys. It LOVES WordPress 2.2! Yay! So I took my custom smiley set that I made for the more-smilies plugin and I threw them into the directory with the other custom smileys included with the Custom Smiley plugin, and I spent some time renaming them in the admin panel (yes, you can do it in the admin panel – no more package config file!), and then… you know what I did?

I added a few new smileys. (Look! Here’s a whole bunch! And here’s s’more!)

I’m not one of those anti-smiley bloggers. I pink puffy heart smileys. I’m creatively expressive that way, though.

So those of you looking for the fix for the more-smilies plugin for wordpress 2.2 because it broke your comment formatting, here’s your fix. Dump the More-Smilies plugin and replace it with Custom Smileys. You’ll be happy, and your headache will go away.

This happy smiley post brought to you by my new fantabulous smiley additions.

Titto Preening
5? x 7? Oil Painting
Canvas Panel
© 2007 Leanne Wildermuth
All Rights Reserved
(portfolio view)

I’m not sure how it happened, but for those of you waiting to upgrade to WordPress 2.2 – you might want to wait a bit longer. The post preview that you know and love and have come to rely on to proof your posts prior to publishing has been changed. The post preview option isn’t even available until after you “save and continue editing” (even with the auto save feature), and then you notice a hyperlink to preview that opens up in a new window.

This, in my own humble opinion, was a big mistake.

These are the changes that were made in the core WordPress files. I am going to attempt to modify the code to see if I can’t get the iframe preview pane back – and I’ll let you know how that goes.

The crazy thing is, in the 2.2 list of changes this wasn’t even a suggestion. I can’t find any mention of it at all. In fact, what was mentioned was a request (here) to put the jump link to the preview pane back on the write post page. (Remember that?) If you’ll scroll down through the replies to that ticket (which reads “fixed”), you’ll see that it went completely south, the initial ticket wasn’t fixed – the whole function was changed to something entirely different than the original ticket requested.

I’ve opened up a topic on the WordPress-Extend-Ideas forum to put the preview back inline and allow users the option to turn it on or off. You can view the thread here, and if you’re so inclined, please leave a comment on the topic to let the head guru’s know whether or not this feature is important to you. If you’re a member of the wordpress support forum, your login info works here. If you’re not, consider registering – it’s a beneficial give and take community of WordPress users.

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UPDATE: Download the preview frame plugin written by Rob @ Roblog

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I completed Titto’s portrait today. I would love to hand deliver it and give him a piece of string cheese and see if he gives me a cat call or something. Knowing his personality though, he’d probably just stare at his portrait, bob his head and say “pretty boy”. Which is just as rewarding, since he already admires himself in his other painting.

I’ll show you the scan after he’s dry.

Titto’s underpainting is finished, now when this is dry I’ll go over the piece again and enhance all of the colors and each of the feathers.

WordPress 2.2 is out!

This has been in the works for some time, it boasts a ton of new features and fixes. If you’re powered by WordPress, you will want this upgrade – but I highly suggest giving it a couple of weeks for the dust to settle first.

If you’re still on blogger – check out this new function:

A new Blogger importer that is able to handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger product and seamlessly import posts and comments without any user interaction beyond entering your login.

If you’re ready to leave Blogger – I’ve got you covered, here’s a step-by-step how-to!

There are so many new features, you can have a look if you’re feeling techy!

Titto’s background is complete and drying, very cool sap and olive green tones complimented with indigo, ochre and a creamy naples yellow will really set off his bright plumage. He’ll just pop right off of the canvas when I’m done.

I’ll work on his underpainting and show you another progress pic tomorrow.