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Quick Doctype Reference

Written by Chris

Never bother with quirks mode again. Get yourself a doctype. Choose one from our wide selection:

HTML 4.01 Transitional

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

HTML 4.01 Strict

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

XHTML 1.0 Transitional

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

XHTML 1.0 Strict

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

HTML 5

<!DOCTYPE html>

How to display RSS feeds on your blog

Written by Chris

Here are just a couple of easy ways to display an external rss feed on your Blogsome blog.

  1. Go to Widgetbox. Follow their instructions on how to turn your blog into a widget (they call it a ‘blidget’) and then copy the code they give you and simply paste it into your blog’s index.html file. If you have another blog somewhere else, you could turn that into a widget, display it on your Blogsome page, and show all your readers what a busy blogger you are. Excellent!

  2. Sign up free with webrss.com instead and follow their instructions.

As an example, we’re showing the latest headlines from CNN on the sidebar. It’s really easy to display feeds on Blogsome. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

Smarty and PHP date codes

Written by Chris

Handy reference tables for when you want to change how dates and times are presented on individual blog posts.

Day
d Day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros 01 to 31
D A textual representation of a day, three letters Mon through Sun
j Day of the month without leading zeros 1 to 31
l (lowercase ‘L’) A full textual representation of the day of the week Sunday through Saturday
N ISO-8601 numeric representation of the day of the week (added in PHP 5.1.0) 1 (for Monday) through 7 (for Sunday)
S English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters st, nd, rd or th. Works well with j
w Numeric representation of the day of the week 0 (for Sunday) through 6 (for Saturday)
z The day of the year (starting from 0) 0 through 365
Week
W ISO-8601 week number of year, weeks starting on Monday (added in PHP 4.1.0) Example: 42 (the 42nd week in the year)
Month
F A full textual representation of a month, such as January or March January through December
m Numeric representation of a month, with leading zeros 01 through 12
M A short textual representation of a month, three letters Jan through Dec
n Numeric representation of a month, without leading zeros 1 through 12
t Number of days in the given month 28 through 31
Year
L Whether it’s a leap year 1 if it is a leap year, 0 otherwise.
o ISO-8601 year number. This has the same value as Y, except that if the ISO week number (W) belongs to the previous or next year, that year is used instead. (added in PHP 5.1.0) Examples: 1999 or 2003
Y A full numeric representation of a year, 4 digits Examples: 1999 or 2003
y A two digit representation of a year Examples: 99 or 03
Time
a Lowercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem am or pm
A Uppercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem AM or PM
B Swatch Internet time 000 through 999
g 12-hour format of an hour without leading zeros 1 through 12
G 24-hour format of an hour without leading zeros 0 through 23
h 12-hour format of an hour with leading zeros 01 through 12
H 24-hour format of an hour with leading zeros 00 through 23
i Minutes with leading zeros 00 to 59
s Seconds, with leading zeros 00 through 59
u Milliseconds (added in PHP 5.2.2) Example: 54321
Timezone
e Timezone identifier (added in PHP 5.1.0) Examples: UTC, GMT, Atlantic/Azores
I (capital i)Whether or not the date is in daylight saving time 1 if Daylight Saving Time, 0 otherwise.
O Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours Example: +0200
P Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) with colon between hours and minutes (added in PHP 5.1.3) Example: +02:00
T Timezone abbreviation. Examples: EST, MDT …
Z Timezone offset in seconds. The offset for timezones west of UTC is always negative, and for those east of UTC is always positive. -43200 through 50400
Full Date/Time
c ISO 8601 date (added in PHP 5) 2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00
r ? RFC 2822 formatted date. Example: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200
U Seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT) See also time()

You only ever need one theme

Written by Chris

If there’s one thing that Blogsome users agree on, it’s themes. There aren’t enough of them, and they aren’t very interesting. But there is something you can do about it.

If you don’t like your blog’s theme, change it!

I know what you’re going to say: ‘There aren’t any good themes to choose from.’ Well, that’s where you’re wrong. Because here’s an amazing fact:

You only ever need one theme. By making a few simple alterations to that theme, you can create anything you want.

Yes, it’s true, and I can prove it to you. Just go over to CSS Zen Garden. They have a gallery full of excellent themes and they are all created from exactly the same HTML template. Only the styles have been changed.

So, there’s no need to worry about Blogsome’s dearth of themes. Now you can create your own. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Pick a Blogsome theme that is similar to what you want. For example, if you want a sidebar on the right hand side, don’t pick a theme with a left hand sidebar
  2. Tweak and change as much as you like.

Who knows? By custom building your own theme in this way, you might even become an excellent HTML coder, a CSS wizard, or a brilliant theme designer.

A few words of warning, though. Be careful which theme you use as your starting point. The only theme I’ve ever had any problems with was one called ‘dots2′. In my opinion, you need a bit of expertise before you try and alter that one. ‘Mars spirit’ is a nice theme, too, but I think it has a few too many graphics to make it easy to customise.

Personally, I’d start with one of the ‘Viewfinder’ themes, or ‘Green track’ or maybe ‘Minimaplus’. Start by changing the header image; experiment with different typefaces. And most importantly:

Switch off the WYSI-Wordpress WYSIWYG editor in your Plugins. If you want to learn CSS properly, stop using <font> tags in your blog posts. The right place to change the font colours on your blog is in your style sheet.

Blogsome might only have a few basic themes to offer but don’t let that bother you. Just learn a bit about HTML and CSS coding, and you’ll find there’s a lot more you can do with Blogsome themes than you could possibly imagine.

How to create a Site Map

Written by chris at itsallbeta

If you are having difficulty creating a Site Map in Blogsome, these tips should help.

  1. On your Dashboard, go to Manage > Pages and click the button that says ‘Create new page’. (If you have already created a Site Map but it is not working, select ‘Edit’.)

  2. In the box marked ‘Page Title’, type ‘Site Map’.

  3. Leave the box marked ‘Page Content’ blank. This is important.

  4. If you already had something written in the ‘Page Content’ area, erase it. Then go to Manage > Hacks and click ‘Clear cache’.

  5. Return to Dashboard and go to Manage > Files. Select the file called ‘index.html’.

  6. In your ‘index.html’ file, find the main content div.

  7. Find the bit that says {$content) and put the following piece of code immediately after it.

{if $smarty.server.REQUESTURI == '/sitemap/'} <h2>Site map</h2 <ul>{wplistpages}</ul> <h2>Categories</h2> <ul>{listcats optionall='1' all='All' sortcolumn='name' optioncount='0' children='0'}</ul> <h2>Posts</h2> <ul>{getarchives type='postbypost' limit='' format='html'}</ul> {/if}

  1. Click ‘update template’.

  2. View your Site Map, which should now be working fine.