Today i downloaded Internet Explorer 8, which is now in beta testing. It runs great. It’s faster than IE 7 (although not as pretty), and it’s got this wonderful little setting that keeps google from collecting all of your internet surfing data. On the one hand, that could mean that my adsense revenue’s source is being cut off at the knees, but on the other hand, I appreciate it for my own surfing.
I lied. IE8 is sooooo not ready. As I’ve done more surfing, I’ve discovered that pages have just do not display correctly. Booo!
One of the first things I did when I uploaded my first WordPress magazine theme was to comb through it’s code. I figured out what made the theme do what, and I moved things around to make it look like I wanted it to look.
If you look at The Brown Spectator’s website, you’ll see elements from online magazines that I regularly read. I’ve taken my inspiration for some of the elements in the header from Politico, I’ve taken inspiration for the images that display the title of the display categories from Human Events, the navigation bar and the element right underneath the header was taken from Harper’s. Anymore, you wouldn’t know that the website started as the Mimbo theme.
At Closing Remarks nearly every element was stolen right from the New Yorker and Vanity Fair’s websites. This theme will see an awful lot of modifications, but as it is now, Closing Remarks is the first instantiation of my new Black Widow theme which will be available for download sometime this year.
I know, it’s one of those important life questions: who would win if you pit a black widow spider against a scorpion. Being as how this is Spidermarket and I’ve just begun beta testing of the greatest wordpress magazine theme ever created aptly namedBlack Widow, I would like to say that the spider rules the day. But sadly…
But seriously, if you have Internet Explorer 5 or 6 still, DOWNLOAD THE NEWEST VERSION. Look, as the web gets further and further away from antiquated browsers, so do programmers. And, it’s really frustrating trying to design internet themes and applications for people who can’t see things clearly. Look, if you are using a depracated version of IE or Firefox, you may think that you’re seeing the internet like a normal person, but the reality is, you are probably seeing a lot of sites differently than they are intended to be seen. So please, fo ryour sake and orus, UPDATE.
In the last few weeks, I’ve been reading a lot about Woopra. At first, I was a bit skeptical in terms of how I thought it would stand up against Google Analytics. But, now, I’m sold. Since my foray into Google analytics, i have often been frustrated by the lack of real-time analysis. There is a full day lag when it comes to viewing stats. What that means is if someone important begins driving tons of traffic to your site, you won’t know who was responsible until the day after it happens. It’s important, especially for magazine developers, to know what their users are doing and when their doing it. It helps immensely. I’m not going to say much more, though. Just watch the following video. But, don’t get too excited, I wouldn’t want you to pee your pants.
GBTV #337 | Introducing Woopra from Neal Campbell on Vimeo.
So it’s in beta. But here is the first site ever implemented with the Black Widow Magazine Theme based on The New Yorker’s website: Closing Remarks. This theme is designed to handle massive amounts of content and uses Custom Fields exclusively to implement content on each page. That’s right, every single page is constructed by the user using only custom fields. As far as I know, this theme is the first of its kind. No one has ever done this. When released to the public, this theme will come packaged with a number of really useful plugins. I’m really proud of this. It’s not ready for public use yet (I have yet to even begin the construction of one entire sidebar), but when it is, I think this will be the most comprehensive free magazine theme available for WordPress.
