A very quick post…

A user of my Bogart WordPress theme was kind enough to point out that there was a minor bug in the comments.php file which was causing some page rendering issues when users were required to be logged in to make comments. I quickly tracked the culprit down and squashed the bug with my big size 12…

If you’re a Bogart user, head on over to the theme page and grab a new copy. Or, if you’ve modified the theme in some way, all you really have to replace is the “comments.php” file from the new archive you download, and you’re all set.

Update: Another minor bug was found in the “archive.php” file which has corrected as well, bringing the latest version to 1.0.4.

• Yasu Updated to Version 2.7
• Mailplane Clean CSS Updated
• Yasu Updated to Version 2.7.3

If you began using WordPress prior to version 2.2, you may notice that your database has tables with two different character sets and collations. This is because all database tables created prior to WordPress 2.2 use the latin1 character set and the latin1_swedish_ci collation, and all database tables created after WordPress 2.2 use the utf8 character set and the utf8_general_ci collation.

(Via MacManX.com.)

James Huff has written a very handy how-to for fixing your WordPress character sets & collations. I highly recommend preforming the clean up if you’re technically savvy and have access to your MySQL database. I was in bad need of a clean up myself, and this helped tremendously. I was also able to fix some other lingering link and email address issues I’ve caused by serving my WordPress install on 3 different domains over the years.

• Automatically Get Rid of Those Used .zip Archives
• Mailplane Clean CSS Updated (Again)
• Mailplane Clean CSS Update

A quick note to say that a few more tweaks to my Bogart theme has brought it to version 1.0.2, and is downloadable from the Bogart page.

If you use it and like it, go get it…

• Bogart WordPress Theme Updated
• Mailplane Clean CSS Updated
• Yasu Updated to Version 2.7.3

I’m very pleased to announce that after a few days of nose to the grindstone, my Bogart WordPress theme has been updated in a major way, and is now released as a full-fledged “1.0″ version.

Lots of enhancements went into this release. First, there’s the use of a custom display font for the “H tags” (H1, H2, etc.) using the next big thing, @font-face styling. They face used is “Tiresias Infofont“. It’s a nice, modern display font. For other free fonts that can be used in CSS & HTML pages/themes, visit Font Squirrel. There is a metric ton of cool faces available for use there.

Second, the main navigation now supports drop-down menus for subpages. See it in action by hovering over the Projects link in the navigation menu above, you’ll see a drop-down for all of my themes — that is, unless you’re browsing with IE6, and if you are, shame on you. Get with the times already…

Third, Bogart now properly handles threaded comments, which were introduced in WordPress 2.7.

Last, but not least, depending on the type of page (index, post or page) you can set up the left sidebar column to use different widget configurations. If you want one widget to display on your index page, and some other on a single post, you can have it. If you don’t want post related widgets on your non-post pages, you can have that too. The right sidebar is shared among all page types, so you can put the widgets you want on all pages there.

There are a lot of other little style related things that make the theme overall more pretty, and more modern than its predecessors. If you’re using Bogart already, I know you’ll really like this version.

Head on over to the Bogart page and download yourself a copy. You’ll be glad you did. Or, if you want to see the theme in action, browse the site.

Let me know what you think.

• Bogart WordPress Theme Updated
• FastScripts 2.6 Update Available from Red Sweater Software
• FontSquirrel.com Adds @font-face Generator

I learned a valuable lesson the hard way today. The lesson being, always test your WordPress site after you activate or deactivate a plugin.

It turns out using the WordPress Multibox Plugin on my site was locking visitors out from being able to download zip compressed files if that download link used an image for the link. It’s been going on for at least 2 or 3 weeks. I’m baffled as to why it took that long to hear from anyone.

The cause was that the image, which is a .gif, was listed as one of the image types the plugin should apply to. Since I probably won’t use a .gif for anything I’d want the Multibox Plugin to act on, I removed it from the list of file extensions. Problem solved easily.

So, the moral of the story is test, test again and then test some more when making any kind of change to your site.

• Bogart WordPress Theme Updated
• Clean Up Your WordPress Database Collations
• One for the WordPress Users

At the request of Ben Vassie, I’ve updated Bogart to version 0.9 to include gravatar support. I also threw in a few other minor aesthetic fixes while I was mucking about in the code.

It’s downloadable from the Bogart page at http://jimmitchell.org/projects/bogart/

Enjoy!

• Bogart WordPress Theme Updated
• Yasu Updated to Version 2.7.3
• Mailplane Clean CSS Updated

Would you provide supportive services to someone for free so that person could make a living doing what they do? Say, if someone ran a clothing store, would you sew all the garments and set them on the curb with a free sign so that shop owner could take your work and sell it without paying you a penny for it? What about a deli? Would you bake bread to give away for free so they could use it to sell sandwiches to make money?

I’m sure the answer would be no to both cases. Then why is it that some people who run WordPress sites seem to think that they can take themes which have very specific copyright restrictions on them, change those themes as they please, remove all credit to the original author (who put their personal time and effort into the work), and then present it as their own on a commercial blog?

I don’t know why either, but that’s exactly what I found twice this week regarding my Bogart theme, which has a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License attached to it. The first was a site that made some alterations to Bogart by adding a few new class selectors, images, and changing the ordering of columns in the index template. All credit to me was removed from the theme template (except in the CSS file where no one would see it). The second didn’t change a thing, aside from removing my copyright in the footer.php file, and replacing it with their own.

In both cases, the sites are set up as commercial blogs using Google AdSense ads to generate income. In other words, they’re using my free bread to create sandwiches that are making them money. This isn’t right. When something’s not right, I fight.

I’m pleased to say that in the case of the first site, I was able to get the matter resolved the day I contacted them. As it was told, the original owner of the site changed my theme before selling the entire blog to another company. In this case, the new owner did the right thing, and we were able to agree on a fair license agreement to use my work. Even though he didn’t change my work himself, the new owner was still using my core code base, and recognized this fact. I have tremendous respect for this individual for doing the right thing without hesitation.

The second, which I just learned of this evening, has been notified of their infringement. I am still waiting to hear from someone. There was no way to contact anyone directly and emails sent to very generic accounts for the site have bounced back. The site appears to be a link-bait type of set up with tons of keywords and links to other spammy blogs. I may have to pull a DMCA take down on them if they don’t respond.

Update: The second site has responded, and have added my theme credit link back to the footer file.

The point of all this is simple. If you want a cool looking WordPress theme for your site, especially if you’re hoping to make money from it — think before you start making changes to someone else’s work. Ask yourself “Did someone else put their own time in effort into this nice looking theme? And would they be pissed off if I removed their credit before I put it up on my site?” Your id would tell you yes in both cases.

Simply because something is available for download on the internet, that doesn’t mean it’s free. Just like music, poetry and art, code is owned by the person who created it (or whoever they wrote it for). So do the right thing. If that WordPress theme has a credit link in the footer, and you want to use it for free — then leave the link right where it is. By putting that little link where we do, we theme authors are simply asking to be paid for our work in recognition via clicks back to our sites. And if you don’t want the link, then contact the author to work something out. Even if it’s just a little scratch in their Paypal account, getting a few bucks for their labor of love will make the day for most theme authors.

The moral of my rant? That WordPress theme was made public for a reason — because somebody with talent wanted to share it with you and the rest of the world. If it has some restrictions and a copyright notice attached, then honor it… Because that’s the right thing to do — both morally and legally.

• One for the WordPress Users
• Bogart WordPress Theme Updated
• Clean Up Your WordPress Database Collations

A quick note to let those interested know that I’ve added a new “wide” single column page option to my Bogart WordPress theme, as well as tweaking some of the CSS. The wide page has no sidebar in it at all. Perfect for those single pages that you don’t want sidebar stuff cluttering up. You can download the latest archive (v0.8) from the Bogart page.

• Bogart WordPress Theme Updated
• Mailplane Clean CSS Updated
• Yasu Updated for Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion”