WordPress Quick Tip: Turn off Smileys

Nathan Rice on September 16, 2007

Smiley FacesThis is just a very quick tip for your WordPress blog. One of the most annoying things about WordPress’s default settings is the fact that smileys are turned on by default. What’s a smiley, you say? When you put characters together like a colon and an closing parenthesis, WordPress replaces the text with a little yellow smiley face. How cute.

The problem is, many times WordPress theme designers put styles in the stylesheet to control any image in the content div that will either float all images or maybe put a border around them. The result is a screwed up story … all because of this “cute” little feature.

On top of that, let’s say you wanted to put an actual parenthetical statement in your blog story. Now imagine that your parenthetical statement ends with the number “8”. You wouldn’t think that would be a problem … but if you have smileys turned on, it is a problem. Read More

3 Ways to Optimize Your Blog Homepage

Nathan Rice on September 14, 2007

Back when I wrote “Good Design Starts with the Homepage”, I didn’t include much in the way of tips for actually achieving that perfect homepage. The fact is, there is an endless list of possibilities to optimizing your blog’s homepage, but I believe that if you do these 3 simple things, you’ll be on your way to the perfect homepage!

(disclaimer: all the below tips pertain to WordPress blogs. Sorry guys, I’m a WordPress fanboy.)

1. Use the correct header tags

One of the most common semantic mistakes made by blog designers (at one time, myself included) is using the wrong header tag to wrap your titles in. Read More