How to make category tabs in wordpress.com

One design feature that many WordPress blogs have and that no TypePad blog has is page tabs. You have probably seen them on many wordpress.com blogs, and you can see them on this blog too: The tabs “Home”, “About”, “Contact” and “Scoreboard” are pointing to pages. But did you know that you can make them point to categories instead?

How to take away global tags and categories in WordPress

Today deserves two posts. What I learned yesterday by applying CSS to my theme was an eye-opener. With very few tricks even the most dull of the WordPress templates can be turned into something fully personal and unique. I also learned one more thing. You don’t have to display the global tags and categories under, over or near your post, you can simply hide them.

WordPress CSS versus TypePad CSS

Something isn’t right about this blog today…can you see what? If you’re regular reader of this blog, or even if you’re just a regular WordPress user or even if you’re just a regular reader of blogs on WordPress, you will realize that this is not how the Contempt theme is supposed to look like.  You’re right. I’ve done something to it. I bought the so-called CSS-upgrade and tried to do some styling. It wasn’t that difficult. But that’s not the whole story…

Annoying things about WordPress: Choosing the right theme for your tag cloud

If you are a regular reader of this blog you will have noticed that my theme changes…almost every day. That is because I’m still having issues with the tag cloud, as I described in my post about the tag cloud in WordPress. Although WordPress has fixed the line break issue I described in said post, the tag cloud looks everything from absolutely neat to absolutely awkward, depending on my choice of theme. And I like using the tag cloud, so I am faced with a dilemma here.

Update: Annoying things about WordPress fixed: Tag cloud

Yes! Finally WordPress did something about the tag cloud I mentioned in a previous post. Now it’s fixed and the line breaks nicely so that the tag cloud is wrapped inside the sidebar and not protruding or truncated. Thanks, WordPress!

Annoying things about WordPress: Tag cloud

Update 2008/07/08: The issue has been fixed (sort of).

Now here’s one thing I really don’t like about WordPress: the tag cloud. The tag cloud is a widget that you have to add manually by going to Design > Widgets on your dashboard, it does not come with the theme. In itself, the tag cloud is a brilliant thing. It shows what tags you use most in a font size according to how often you use the tag. That is very nice, if your readers are looking to see what topics you blog about most. But why is the tag cloud so different from the category cloud?

Annoying or good thing about WordPress? Global/local tags and categories

Suppose you’re reading a nice blog on wordpress.com. You’d like to read more on the same subject, so you click the category link or tag link under/over/next to the post…what happens? Suddenly you’re taken to the wordpress.com site where you get a list of all posts on all blogs on wordpress.com that use the same category or tag. But you only wanted to see posts on this blog…Well, then you have to click the categories or tags in the sidebar… that is, if the blog owner uses his widgets. Most do, luckily.

Writing a post in TypePad versus WordPress

A blogger’s first experience with blogging is determined by his or her experience writing and editing and publishing his or her first post. How easy is that in WordPress versus TypePad?

I’m fairly new to blogging. But not to having an online presence. I’ve had a website up and running since 1998, so I do have some experience with web editing tools, ranging from handcoding HTML in Notepad via FrontPage to lastly Dreamweaver. So I know my share of editing tools and my review of WordPress and TypePad as far as editing and managing content goes will be colored by that.

Looking at the screen shots below, bear in mind that TypePad is currently upgrading its composer, and I am still working with the old composer, because my blog is not upgraded yet, so it may look as if TypePad has many fewer options than WordPress. Compared to the new composer, the differences between WordPress and TypePad are not that big. I will get back to that as soon as I too have been upgraded by TypePad.