GermWorks - Web Design & Life

JP2 Designs has just signed off the Warriors for Christ (W4C) websites for the Jubilee World Harvest church in Perth. This was a little different as we also created a customised a MySpace website for them as the general public website.

This post is to explain how I designed it and what plugins and tools I used in the front end development side of things including what links that may have helped me in research and ideas.

Customising MySpace

MySpace was an interesting case as it makes you use tables for layouts and inline style sheets, that styles over the default MySpace layout. The best article I found in how to customise MySpace layouts was Mike Industries blog article “Hacking MySpace Layouts“.

It is not the cleanest way of doing it, as your uploading two layouts which is clumsy to say the least but unlike other social websites this is the only way of customising MySpace. Thanks to Mike for taking the time to document his ‘how to post’.

Designing Warriors for Christ website

The people behind the the Warriors for Christ website wanted something that would help generate interest in people using the website. So we created a WordPress website which will act as a blog with latest events, photos from events and hopefully generate interest with the Youth themselves providing content in comments and their own posts.

Problems and research

I had Two main problems in the design of the W4C website. The first one was getting the content png background transparent in IE 6.0, I tried many hacks but the best and simplest I found was (which can be found in this pdf):
div#content {
background-image: url('images/background.png');
}

*html #content {
background-image: none;
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src="images/background.png", sizingMethod="scale");
}

The *html #content tells the IE 6.0 browser to read this part instead and does not display the background-image but rather displays the filter CSS hack.

The second main problem I had was another IE issue were content kept jumping around when hovering over the top menu link.

Other little problems I had was that the sandbox theme does not by default allow comments on static pages, however by adding the comment line fixed the problem. I also had to research a bit on how to use WordPress widgets.

WordPress Plugins used for Warriors for Christ

• Add Lightbox - You can read about my adventures with these plugins hear.
  
• cforms II - My favourite form plugin.
• Find Us - Allows Google maps to be used. Would prefer if this had a few more features like zoom etc.
• Google Sitemaps - Needed tool for SEO purposes.
• Lightbox 2 Plugin - See Add Lightbox for more information.
• OneClick Installer - Allows me to install plugins without having to use cpanel or ftp which saves time.
• randomimage - One of my most used plugins, allows random images from photo posts display on the right.
• Spam Karma 2 - I prefer this than the askimat plugin and is my default WP spam fighter tool.
• Verse of the Day - Displayed via widgets, have not yet played with the options too much.
• WP_SlimStat - To view stats of who has been visiting the website.

Feedback on Warriors for Christ websites

If you have any feedback or input on the websites designed, plugins or even my research links please feel free to as I welcome them. The websites links are: Public website and the MySpace website.

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