Textpattern 3 | Articles | the bombsite

Once the app. of choice is installed most people can’t resist clicking on the View Site tab just to see how their site is looking so let’s do that.

The default page layout shipped with WP up to and including version 1.2 Mingus. Well it’s simple but there’s some colour there and it looks quite neat and clean but, oh my, is that the common or garden WP menu over-run problem I see there? By Jove, so it is. Look at that credit bar trying to hide behind the menu!! Under normal circumstances, when you’ve just installed WP you won’t actually see this. You only see it here because I have a single, short post in the content. You won’t see it on the comment side because the extra content that includes the comment text box area pushes the credit down below the end of the menu so everything looks hunky dory. Now here’s the controversial bit. I believe that the Powers that be at WP have know that this layout is crap right from the start. That is why, when you install your copy of WP, it has extra posts in the content which are just long enough to push the credit bar below the menu making things look fine on the post side too. I think this is very sneaky of them and they deserve all the arguements they’ve been getting just lately on exactly this subject. If they want to come back at me for that statement they are most welcome. I don’t give a damn. If they are clever enough to produce an app. like WP then they are clever enough to produce a layout which doesn’t break as soon as you add extra items to your menu. They don’t have any excuse for this in my opinion. If you are just starting with your WP app. you might take a look at my fixed layout pages where you can download a replacement layout for this crap. There are a few other layout designs you might want to look at there too along with an explanation of why this problem occurs and how to fix it. Or, if you prefer a fixed-width or 3 column layout, you might want to consider Root’s Gemini or Trident interfaces. Both well tried and tested.

The default TXP layout. Looks a bit stark doesn’t it? So what does it have going for it? Well it’s 3 column if that’s what you’re looking for but can easily be adjusted if not. It’s also coded properly and uses clearing in the proper manner. You can’t see it because there’s nothing in it but there’s a footer at the bottom there and it stays at the bottom regardless of whether you have a long menu or not. You’ll be able to see the very simple default page coding when we get to the Presentation section. Before that though my next post will deal with admin where we should put all those little but important bits of information before we do anything else.