Archive for the ‘Web design & development’ Category

MiniCard Theme for Wordpress – a cool free business card/social network theme

November 10, 2009 | Published in: Web design & development | Tags: , , , , , , 81

minicard

I am releasing my MiniCard theme for wordpress which supports hCard/vCard microformats, tonnes of social networks, showing some portfolio items (optional), and more – all controllable from its own Theme Config page. This theme is free and licensed under GPL – there is also a premium pack available with many theme variations, and the footer feed functionality.

Read more for more information and the download links. I hope you find this theme useful and spread the word :)

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Creating ‘Web 2.0′ Layouts using strips

November 13, 2008 | Published in: Web design & development | Tags: , , , , 9

Creating Layouts using strips

I’ve seen the ‘web 2.0′ layout (full width background, centred content) done in some pretty wacky and different ways, the worst being a background image and then fixed height sections laid on top (if the content wraps or the text is resized…bam..broken layout).

Because of this I am going to demonstrate the method I use – content strips. Hopefully this will be useful to CSS beginners who want to code this type of layout.

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Introducing: Theme Slice

Theme Slice is an exciting take on the current crop of Slicing services out there; a PSD to Wordpress Theme conversion service; brought to you by Anthony Brewitt and yours truly, Mike Jolley. You send in your mock up design and Theme Slice will send you back a full Wordpress Theme based on your design. Read on to learn more.

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Creating an accessible yet sexy search box with CSS

Create a Search BoxSearch boxes: integral parts of many websites but often neglected in terms of markup and style. When considering both accessibility and semantics, marking up a a search box can be a little awkward depending on the look you are trying to achieve.

In this post I will suggest some methods of marking up your search boxes, and show a neat way of styling it using css and a few images.

Continue reading Creating an accessible yet sexy search box with CSS»

Easy jQuery Pull Quotes

Pull QuotesPull quotes, lift-out quotes, or call-outs are a handy method of drawing reader’s attention to a section of text. Recently, on a couple of client projects, I’ve seen the need to enhance large blocks of text so the user could skim read them without missing the really important parts. Pull quotes seemed perfect for this, so I created a small jQuery script to take care of them.

In this article I demonstrate an easy method of creating pull quotes from a block of text using jQuery (a JavaScript library), CSS, and the html span element. I hope you find this method useful.

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Anti-aliased Rounded corners with JQuery

Rounded CornersRecently I’ve been searching for a method of creating nice looking rounded corners with Javascript & JQuery.

First I found the “JQuery Corner” plugin for rounded corners, but was disappointed that it did not include smooth, anti-aliased corners.

I then did some more google-trawling and found this post, which contained a modified version of Curvy Corners for use with JQuery. Now this script was much much better.

However…the filesize was a massive 40kb, way too big for production use, and to make things worse the code was not compatible with packer so I could not reduce the filesize.

Well, I got busy, and fixed the errors. It is now fully packer friendly meaning easy rounded corners in JQuery at only 9kb 8kb 15kb 20kb 16kb 10kb. Excellent. Read more for the download link.

Continue reading Anti-aliased Rounded corners with JQuery»

Defining Success as a Designer

June 15, 2007 | Published in: Web design & development | Tags: , 5

SuccessA few days ago Jonathan Wold, a new friend of mine, tagged me to write about my success as a designer. Well, I’ve dragged myself away from my client work to write about it, even though in my eyes I’m not greatly successful, yet.

O, and as an added bonus you get to see old pictures of me and download some games I made years ago! lol

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“Rivera Web” Icon set

March 30, 2007 | Published in: Web design & development | Tags: 17

Rivera IconsThis is my first set I have ever completed for release, Ive always enjoyed making little icons but Ive never felt compelled to released them. Well at last Ive dedicated some time to getting a set complete and ready to distribute.

I hope they please you, and you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them! Better yet, enjoy them more than I enjoyed making them because some of them were a pain in the butt to make lol.

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miniXFN Icon set & XFN CSS implementation

February 14, 2007 | Published in: Web design & development | Tags: , , , 5

XML mini Icons

XFN (XHTML Friends Network) is a microformat which represents relationships between people with hyperlinks and the use of a simple HTML tag.

They can represent colleagues, contacts, sweethearts, friends and more!

Based on the XFN icon set by Wolfgang Bartelme I have created a small set of mini icons (9×10 pixels) to represent these links between people. I have also made a CSS file which shows the relevant icon when the correct XFN rel tag is present.

Continue reading miniXFN Icon set & XFN CSS implementation»

Using Image replacement techniques

Image ReplacementThis week Ive been trying out a lot of image replacement techniques in main headings, and their are quite a few available. If you have a graphical header logo on a website, with the sites name, often you wont want to have another heading as plain text. Yet, you should want to have the heading readable by screen-readers, and you also want the SEO benefits of the heading.

Ive rounded up my favorite methods, and this entry will show you how to use them, and when to use them.

Continue reading Using Image replacement techniques»

About this site

Blue Anvil is the online web design journal & portfolio of , a web designer from Norfolk, England. Read More »
ThemeSlice
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    • Integrity
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  • Latest Tweet - More

    • Would be nice is people showed more love for MiniCard by rating it on wordpress.org http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/minicard
  • Out of the blue - More

    • MiniCard 1.1.7 Update

      I have just uploaded 1.1.7 of MiniCard here and to the WordPress theme directory. This updates includes:

      • New networks; xing, gowalla, yelp, foursquare, mobileme, google buzz
      • A way to change link text and define multiple links of the same network
      • A way to define your own custom links + icons
      • Improved admin panel

      Hope you like it, and don’t forget you can show your support by purchasing the premium pack from here.

    • Switched: From Shared to VPS

      It’s been about two weeks now since I made the transition from a shared reseller hosting account to a VPS (Virtual Private Server) account – impressions so far, excellent performance but fiddly to configure.

      The reason I wanted to change from shared hosting was the fact the server was always being hacked (even though ALL my scripts were secure), there was frequent downtime, support blamed me for problems every time, and it was slow as hell.

      Those used to a shared hosting environment would probably not know where to start when faced with configuring a VPS. Luckily, a lot of it was pre-configured when I received my account – certainly some of the major security holes were patched. I was not satisfied with those however. As a victim of hacking in the past (previous host swears it was not there fault, something I don’t believe) I took extra care to secure it as a much I could – configuring brute force detection, the firewall, installing mod security (excellent rules for that here: http://www.atomicorp.com/wiki/index.php/Atomic_ModSecurity_Rules) and going though multiple guides (like this one: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=468168) with a fine-tooth comb.

      The result? My pages are loading at least 6 times faster, I have had no down time (or at least have not noticed any), and I feel in control and happy. No longer am I at the mercy of shared hosts :)

      If your interested, I chose ServInt as my provider as they offered a great deal, as well as being a managed service (so I’m not on my own if I screw things up). I was tempted by the bells and whistles of Media Temple, but felt the ServInt service was better value.

    • Download Monitor 3.2.2 Maintenance Release

      Download Monitor has received some more love and has been updated. Here’s the change log from the new version:

      • Small bugfix in uploader.php – cat ID
      • Changed stats graph calculation – thanks lggemini
      • Changes to headers in download.php to avoid caching
      • File Browser fixes – $root was clashing with something….
      • exclude_cat works in all sections of download_page now
      • Removed hardcoding of /uploads/
      • Added action to download.php – should be able to use it to stop a download if you want – maybe limiting downloads per day or something? Whatever you want…
      • Made it so if you post new file on ‘edit’ screen, the post date is updated.
      • Fixed the ‘blank meta’ section which blanks out custom field values when nothing is set.
      • Moved ‘allow_url_fopen’ check.
      • Someone said downloads don’t work with spaces in the name. They do! Wasting my time sonny…
      • All work and no play make jolley a dull boy
      • Had to rename capabilities so they work. Apologies if you have to set this up again! Cheers to Mark Dingemanse.
      • {category_ID} custom format tag added. Useful if you want to send someone to its category on the DL page I guess. Also added {category_other} so when no category is set “other” is shown – this is because the download page can show an ‘other’ section if you want it to.
      • You can now manually edit the post date on the edit download screen.

      If you have edited capabilities for download monitor user permissions, you’ll have to again sorry! This is because I named them too long. Also, you should check your forced downloads still work because there was a logic error meaning they may not have been forced after-all…

      Enjoy.

    • Mahousive update to Download Monitor (3.2)

      Today I completed the update for the Wordpress Download Monitor Plugin – many tweaks, fixes, and features added. There were no changes to the database structure so people upgrading should be fine. Here is the list from the change log:

      • {user} tag added for custom formats
      • ‘autop’ option fix
      • Download page buttons applied with CSS so they are easier to customise/translate.
      • Fix for pagination bug after editing a download
      • Category output fix on edit downloads screen
      • Category urls on download page use ID rather than name to prevent errors when cats have the same names.
      • exclude_cat added to download_page shortcode
      • Localised ‘hits’ ‘date’ ‘title’ on download page
      • Option to disable the download logging
      • Read file ‘chunked’ some people found large files were corrupted so this should help (fingers crossed)
      • Added show_tags option to download page – displays x amount of tags on the download page.
      • File Browser root setting and download.php logic/mime types modified thanks to Jim Isaacs (jidd.jimisaacs.com)
      • Interface Improvements
      • Bulk edit categories, custom fields, tags, member only downloads
      • Added roles for download monitor admin – should be able to use with a role manager plugin if you want anyone other than admin to access the admin section e.g. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/capsman/
      • Change redirect after add
      • Edit Cat names/parents
      • Dedicated tags and thumbnails fields (they still use meta table though)

      And yes, those category link bugs are fixed at long last, and you can edit category names finally. Phew!