Archive for the ‘Site Specific’ Category

Site redesigned (possible theme release?)

March 12th, 2007 6 years, 75 days ago

The latest incarnation of Beccary is now live, as you can hopefully see.

I’d known for a while that I wanted to do a darker blue and green theme but didn’t really have any ideas beyond that. Then a few weeks ago JD of Weblogs.us (who as you may know sponsors and hosts my WP themes) sent me Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. What happened exactly is beyond me, but after reading it a little screenshot with all these page elements and colours sitting just as you see them popped into my head.

The tree is from IStockPhoto and all icons are either from or modified from FamFamFam’s Silk Icon set. I know that the sidebar displays funky in IE5, I’m still working on ironing that out. Additional bug reports are welcome.

Now I don’t usually release my current themes to the public (blame it on my inner narcissist) but depending on public response I am considering releasing this one (replacing the tree and icons of course).

On the plus side it could work at different widths and with a lot of colour schemes. In fact, I was thinking I could package it with a few schemes – not only would that make it more interesting, but it’d then be much easier for users to add their own colours.

On the downside, I have absolutely no idea how to make the sidebar sections alternate with widgets. Hmm…

What do you reckon?

Edit:It’s now 12:10am, April 1st. I obviously didn’t make it. Hopefully there’ll be time to finish fine-tuning things this week, but no promises since I tried that already and it just sucks when they fall through. Becca’s sorry, she really tried.

Edit #2: It’s still coming, I swear! I’ve been sick as a sick dog over the past week though, so this will have to receive a to-do list demotion until I’ve caught back up with studying and work.

File under Site Specific, Themes | 103 Comments

Smilies updated

October 16th, 2006 6 years, 222 days ago

Due to popular request, all smilies are now available as packages for Matt Read’s More Smilies plugin.

File under Asides, Site Specific | 2 Comments

Webhost problems, site down

October 3rd, 2006 6 years, 235 days ago

Beccary has been temporarily shut down due to a problem with her webhost. My apologies to anyone who was inconvenienced by the recent downtime, web access was shut off without prior notice. I am wholly unimpressed and mildly repulsed by the situation.

WP themes are still downloadable thanks to Weblogs.us.
No previews for now, but if you’re looking for something specific:

Hoping to be back soon,
Becca

[Edit: Oct 10th] Things are back up for now. I’ve been in touch with my webhost and we’re working things out. If we stay together after this first argument does it mean we’re in a serious relationship? And I’d like to thank everyone for their support. The advice, hosting offers, and well wishes were definitely appreciated and made me feel much better about everything, thank you! [/Edit]

File under Site Specific | 20 Comments

Hello Again World

July 20th, 2006 6 years, 310 days ago

A place really starts to feel like home when you get in from a long day, see your new bed in your new room, and you couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else. We’ve unpacked our boxes, hung our pictures on the walls, and have already had our first neighbourly dispute (their pipes which are right above us had a leak).

Dorothy and I The turtles are happy with their own new homes… Well, two of them are anyway, Zeus is in a dumpy little tub until the store has the wood for his new enclosure ready. But Dorothy and Waffle are pleased. And they shall be even more pleased once I get their above tank asking areas built so I can fill the water all the way up.

In other news, Will has been promoted so he’s now second in command of the kitchen (he cooks in a Japanese restaurant). We also picked up our new ID cards, he looks like a criminal in his photo and I look like an asshole. Gotta love ID photos.

Regarding the layout changes, sorry to you 800×600ers! I figured I’d never be sure of how I want to arrange things until I just put the changes up and looked, so things will be moving around shortly. (Which with being me and all unfortunately doesn’t mean much since that’s a relative term. )

File under dorothy, Life is Random, Site Specific, Turtles | 10 Comments

Back From Outer Space

March 27th, 2006 7 years, 60 days ago

I’m sorry, I’ve been bad. I’m still alive and kicking, it’s just that sort of kicking you do when you’re stressed.

My love for WordPress is still going strong and I swear I will be releasing some new themes soon. Speaking of themes, I also promise that sometime I’ll get back to sitting on my butt and make this new design what I originally wanted it to be – it’s kind of half finished right now. Oh, and I know you’re bound to run into bugs if you poke around, so please don’t poke around.

(I also love Elea.)

File under Site Specific | 15 Comments

Hiatus, Obviously

October 21st, 2005 7 years, 217 days ago

My dear Beccary is hereby and forthwith on hiatus. Like you didn’t see that coming.

The upcoming month holds much to do. It’s all terribly humdrum, but must be done nonetheless. I won’t bore you with the details, but it will involve me gluing myself to various books and bits of stationary. <sarcasm> Hooray! </sarcasm>

If times allows, which I hope it does, I’ll also be working on some more WordPress themes. One that is fluid/liquid, and one that allows bloggers to easily customise the images and perhaps colour scheme without looking too plain or ‘template-y’. Some thinking still needs to be done on that second one.

I’ve also begun on the next layout for this little site o’ mine. I won’t say any more than it will have so much turtle!

So from when I click the little publish button, Beccary won’t be updated (with anything important or interesting) until mid-November or so. You might catch me being random at my new WordPress.com blog, Becca’s Blog though (I will think of a better name).

Remember to smile.

File under Life is Random, Site Specific | 48 Comments

New Layout: Purple Turtle

May 16th, 2005 8 years, 10 days ago

There’s one thing I tend to do very, very wrong when designing my own layouts. I concentrate too much on what I think visitors would like to see rather than what I myself find pleasing. But not this time.

I like purple. I love turtles. Thus, we have a purple turtle.

The gorgeous photo is from Stock Xchng. I would’ve loved to use a picture of one of my own turts, but they refused to pose like they were flying.

If anything looks funny, it’s probably my fault. Or you could be using a Mac, which I don’t have and can’t test on. Either way, you should tell me and I’ll try my best to make things lovely again.

File under Site Specific | 57 Comments

Blossoms Style

February 23rd, 2005 8 years, 92 days ago

The Blossoms style is back, a bit softer and brighter than before. IE likes to hump the footer background, who knows why, but everything should still be readable. Sorry IE users, but I just can’t bring myself to spend an afternoon messing up my CSS to compensate for that thing.

A favour, please. Could you let me know how the text looks? (In either style.) I’ve just switched from my trusty pixels to relative font sizes and was wondering if you think the new sizes are: a) easier to read, b) more difficult to read, or c) looking exactly the same as the old ones.

Gracias amigos.

File under Site Specific | 17 Comments

Hot Tea on a Cold Day

February 19th, 2005 8 years, 96 days ago

I had my first exam yesterday evening and I’m 99% sure that I passed. I’m not sure how good a pass it’ll be – there were a few technical words that I couldn’t quite remember so I did the best I could – but a pass is a pass. Like my sister gleefully says, P equals degree!

It’s Willie 20th birthday tomorrow, but he’s not all too excited about it – something about hating the idea of becoming an adult! So to celebrate this entry into the land of the grown-up we’re going to go watch a Disney movie. (The Incredibles – it only just came out here as they have to dub a Cantonese version before they can release it.) After that we’ll head off to two of his most loved activities – shopping and eating. Nothing seems to lift that boy (or should I say man)’s mood quite like shopping.

In site news, Beccary’s now running on WordPress 1.5. Now I can relax on this cold day with some hot tea and bask in the sleekness.

File under Life is Random, Site Specific | 14 Comments

Smile?

February 15th, 2005 8 years, 100 days ago

I could not count on one hand the number of sites I have seen offer their own smilie sets that appear to have: 1) taken my smilies, 2) taken smilies from another site, 3) merged the two together (one from here, one from there, maybe put this expression on this base), and 4) called it original.

I don’t bother going after these people though – if I can tell at a glance, so can everyone else. The sets are usually changed just enough to avoid being accused of stealing, but it’s obvious where they started.

But let’s not dwell on fools. Instead, here’s a list of sites offering cute smilies that are suitable for blogs, not to mention obviously original and created by talented pixel-ers.

Feel free to use links in the comments, I’d love some help with expanding the list. Thanking Yvonne, Kanu and Birgit for their input!

File under Bookmarks, Site Specific, Webbery | 15 Comments

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