Rory Franklin

I wasn’t entirely happy with my previous theme. It was alright, but felt a bit too rough and I really wanted to put something out that I was happier with.

So I have spent the last few evenings working on this theme and am much happier about it. There are still a few issues that need tweaking here and there, but on the whole I like it. I haven’t had a chance to test it in anything other than IE6 and Firefox though, so if anything looks broken please let me know!

I am having some issues with the side bar though. I want to change the "Recent Comments" section to have a » in front of each one, and the same for the "Nike+" section. The "Nike+" section seems quite tricky as the XML is causing a problem when putting in » as it is not a defined entity or something…

Any suggestions are welcomed!

Ok, well, I’m not really back in town as such. I’ve just finally redesigned my blog. Having seen Seth’s latest redesign, and Nicola’s new blog, I thought I really should get around to fixing this place up!

Unfortunately I’m not as design orientated as they are, so it looks a little rough around the edges but I am happy with it! There are probably a few issues I’ve not noticed (or that you think are issues and I think are supposed to be like that!), so please let me know if you see anything. I’ve only really tested this in IE6 and FireFox. IE7 might throw a spanner in the works and I’ve not had a chance to look at it on Safari yet.

I’ll post an update about what I’ve been doing in recent months soon! Honest!

Edit: Oh, if anyone can help me figure out how to replace a link within a H1 with an image, I’d muchos appreciatos it. I’m currently doing it a bad way (H1 inside the A tag, doesn’t validate) and would love to get it semantic and looking right!

Edit 2: I’ve fixed the above problem. I was being a spanner. Basically, I have my A tag within an H1 tag. I’ve set the A tag to display:block and given it a height/width the same as the header image. I’ve then used text-index:-9999px; to shunt it off the page.

Well, things have been kind of hectic recently, so not many updates. Just thought i’d say hi. I have various assignments for my course at university that need doing, so that is starting to take a lot of my time up. I’ve also been working on a portfolio script (reasonably basic, I don’t need anything too complicated) but that has been put on the backburner for a little while whilst I finish my assignments.

I also love America. Well, more specifically, a certain company who I recently bought some CD’s from. I have an insatiable urge to listen to music. I love it, and can’t get enough of it. However, I also like to support the artists who produce the music I so dearly love. This, understandably, gets expensive and being a student with not a huge amount of money (no job currently, so i’m living off fumes!) makes things harder. Recently i’ve been getting some money here and there from various sources (nothing illegal, just projects and web hosting etc.) which has mostly gone on buying CD’s. Back to the original point, I recently bought 5 CD’s from UndergroundHipHop.com which set me back just over $100 (around £58 with conversion rates). Seeing as one CD was a special edition, limited release (7500 copies), and some of the others were CD’s a few years old, I thought it was quite a reasonable price. I also got to choose a free gift (out of about 30 options - ranging from CD’s to posters) with my purchase. I chose a poster, because I thought it was quite cool. Now, international shipping takes 7-14 days so I was expecting about 10 days or so. It arrived today however, the 7th day since it was shipped, with everything I ordered, plus more! It came with two free CD’s (one of which is being advertised on the site as free with every order over $35) and two extra posters.

Result.

http://roryfranklin.com/temp/firetheme/

Suggestions welcome, i still need to tweak the comments form (which you can’t see) to have some updated graphics, but other than that what you see is what you get.

I’m still unsure about the navigation etc.

Woo Woo! Yeah, i got WordPress to work with my layout just about, but it was a bit touch and go! I have some plans for this layout (which actually involves multiple themes when i can get around to making them!) which are going to hopefully be implemented soon. I fell in love with the header image which i’ve used (gotta love stock photo’s!) and plan on incorporating more great header images for themes. Credit for it will be put in the About page once it’s done.

If you find any problems, please let me know. I’m unsure as to how the comments section will work out. Chances are there will be a problem or something there.

Due to various circumstances, my old blog went kaput!

Basically, for some reason i can’t upload anything properly when i’m at uni and i was trying to upgrade to WordPress 2 and give my website a whole new look (with a shiney new layout i have ready). So not being able to upload properly and attempting to upgrade means that it’s all gone wrong.

I’m not too fussed because i barely used to blog anyway, and this gives me a fresh start. I will get around to porting my layout to wordpress and getting the rest of the site up and ready too. I’m playing around with a few things at the moment, and tweaking the layout (it’s a bit plain in the body of it at the moment) to get it just right. Once that’s all done, i will unleash it on you all