I love Firefox, it is my favoured browser but there is one little thing that really frustrates me, especially from a designer point of view. You may, or may not have noticed that the browser adds a dotted border around hyperlinks that only become visible upon activating the link. For many this is probably not a problem as its not exactly causing any problems to anyone, but I don’t like it.

To remove this border, all you need to do is add the two lines of code shown below to your sites Stylesheet and wahlaaa, gone! Many of the big sites haven’t even bothered to do this, a few to mention are Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube.

Anyways, here is the code…

a:active { outline: none; }
a:focus { -moz-outline-style: none; }

I would be greatful if you could take a second to help promote my blog and share this link with any of your favoured networking sites using the link below…

If you have read any of my previous posts about the mighty WordPress, then you might be able to work out I am a big fan! Very true indeed! Infact 99% of the sites I have done use it. When creating a design I won’t build it into WordPress from the start, main reason is that I can concentrate fully on the HTML/CSS code and not have to worry about PHP loops, etc. Much simpler!

I use Lorem Ipsum to generate text to bulk out my design and give me a more realistic feel of how it will look live, which is great. When I come to integrating the site into the WordPress CMS I end up left with a kind of ‘blank canvas’ containing just the default ‘Hello World’ post! Having to continuously create fake posts/categories/tags/comments to check it all works within WP is well, Very Frustrating

For anyone else who has the same problem as me, this ones for you. Download the .XML linked below and import this into your WordPress installation and problem is sorted, the .XML will import the following:

• 5 Pages, with full content
• 10 Posts, with content, including Tags, Categories and Excerpt
• 21 Unique Tags
• 11 Unique Categories
• 10 Unique Comments, including several from the ‘Tester’ user (Administrator)
• 7 Default Links
• 1 Post (under category ‘Bullet List’) contains a Bullet List
• 1 Post (under category ‘Numbered List’) contains a Numbered List
• Various Lengths on each posts content and title

If you are not familiar with Importing an .XML file into Wordpress then follow this quick guide (based on the 2.6 version of WP)

1. Unzip the .XML from the downloaded archive
2. Log into your WP administration area (http://www.sitename/wp-admin)
3. Select Manage from the main menu
4. From the Manage sub-menu, select Import
5. You will be provided with a list of Blog types you wish to import from, select WordPress from the bottom of the list
6. Next select Browse
7. Locate to the .XML you downloaded from the link below, select Okay
8. Finally, select Upload File and Import

Any problems let me know, but should be fairly straight forward! Finally here is the download link:

Download: WordPress XML Import | Help spread this post by Digging It

I’ve been saying to myself for a year or so now that I would develop my own WordPress theme to distribute on the web. Well, I recently have had my tonsels out which has meant lots of time has been spent either in bed, or lounging around the house (be it in pain but still). The other day I decided I finally started, and three days in its going really well!

The name of my first WordPress theme is (Nerd)Press, inspired by the TV show Chuck which I was watching at the time. So far I have working index and single-post pages, as well as working navigation, sidebar and footer sections, and finally a hugggee search bar panning 800+ pixels but looks very neat. The searchbar itself slides down using the ever popular jQuery which I am loving! I have also registered http://nerdpress.co.uk for when its ready to go public, at present there is only a centered logo up there but I plan on having an Email submission box up soon for anyone wanting to receive updates on my progress.

Thats about it for now, but here is a screenshot of what I have so far.

Well, I finally did it! Selfconclusion has a new look, and I am very happy with the way it has come out. I’ve been wanting to do it for ages now but after several unsuccessful attempts, I was beginning to think I would never get it done. Anyway’s thats the past now and heres the present. The site is not 100% completed and there are a few bugs, The archive page isn’t done yet but the single post page is.

As you may already be aware, I design my sites around Wordpress, which if your not familiar with, you need to start getting familiar with, as it is a very handy CMS that allows you to fully customize and extend using various plugins. The old site was built around Wordpress 2.1, and for the new look I decided to upgrade to 2.6 which I am finding so much better! Wordpress is totally free, and very simple to setup. In fact, your Webhosting most likely has it ready to install straight from your control panel, which makes things even easier!

I need to thank Rick from Rick’s HideOut for his Wordpress Plugins that have been implemented in the new design, these plugins are ‘Twitter for Wordpress’, ‘Last.fm for Wordpress’ and ‘Del.icio.us for Wordpress’ which are all very simple but handy plugins for displaying content from external sites straight to your Wordpress Blog.

I won’t rant on anymore, but I hope you like my new site, I have also redesigned my Webfolio which is now up and running, the address is http://stugreenham.com. Below is a before shot of Selfconclusion, I hope you agree it looks tonnes better!

Let me know what you think of the new look….

I just wanted to let people know that I have designed another site at the following address http://iphone.selfconclusion.co.uk that is based around customizing the iPhone’s home screen by adding new custom web icons. I will be designing more icons shortly, but there are a couple listed on the site at present so everyone can see how it works. These new icons I am bringing to you are not just to pimp up the home screen but there also very useful, for example, the iPhone version of the eBay site is up and running now, and the custom eBay web icon you can add from my new site doubles as a search box linking you straight through to search results stopping you having to actually load up eBay’s home screen first.

Check the site out and let me know what you think. Also don’t forget to spread the word!