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Entries Tagged as 'Freebies'

Twitter Plugin For Mango Blog

Twitter, the popular micro blogging social phenomenon is taking the blogosphere by storm. I felt Mango Blog needed to keep up with the times. I was also working on a new theme that required a twitter sidebar widget. This meant I had to force myself to learn about the plugin system for mango blog. I was about to throw in the towel, call it quits and cry my eyes out then all of a sudden it started to "click". Within the next hour or so I fixed my plugin and got it working as intended. Hooray!

Features

I tried to make it as flexible as possible. Adding a few extra hooks for future styling needs.  While I was at it. I added a custom javascript that automatically links @Usernames as well as hyperlinks in the tweet. Something the original twitter badge does not do.

Configuration Settings

I tried to make the plugin settings functional as well for future proofing the plugin. I added the ability to customize the H2 text that appears in the sidebar. Or you can choose not to show any heading at all by leaving the field blank.

Additionally, I added a location selector for the follow me hyperlink. There are three settings available: None for do not show a link. Below for displaying the traditional link below the posts, or Above if you want to link to a twitter logo or other graphic.

Lastly, I added the ability to specify the number of posts to show at a time.

Download Plugin

So here is it! My very first mango blog plugin! Since this is my first plugin, I would really appreciate your feedback, comments or suggestions.

Custom Tag Option

As a side note, I also have a custom tag version of this plugin. It's not as good as the plugin, but sometimes a theme might require something unique that a sidebar plugin cannot provide.

Thank You

Thanks to Laura for advising me on pod enabeling this plugin, and also for writing a portion of the installer script so that it's "Mango Certified"

10 Pixel Grid System

David Perel and I share a common thought process when it comes to creating layouts. Keep it simple and keep it flexible. We both believe in a 10 Pixel  Grid System. For some time I have thought about writing a framework similar to 960.gs, but have determined that it's just too much work, and I am not that motivated. So instead I thought I would just share my Photoshop template with you.

Download the Photoshop file

Once you have the file open you should see the Guides, if not, press cmd+; to turn them on. If you want to add some additional structure to your design, then you can also turn on the Photoshop Grids (cmd+') The default grid overlay does not work al to well with our template so open up the photoshop preferences (cmd+k) And go to the "Guides, Grid, Slices & Count…" tab.

Photoshop Preference Pane Screenshot

In the Grid section change the Gridline to every 60 pixels and the subdivisions to every 6. This will give you a nice 10x10 pixel grid for your document.

 

ColdFusion Auto Gallery

Creating a photo gallery can be time consuming for even a handful of images. Auto Gallery is a quick and dirty photo gallery tag meant to solve one problem. Automatically generating photo galleries from a folder of images and thumbnails. Team up autoGallery with Photoshop's Batch automation tools and you have a very quick gallery of images!

If your the type of person that just can't wait, here is a demo and download link.

View Demo | Download Zip

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