I’m really pleased to announce that the old theme for FiddyP has gone bye bye, it was a great theme and it was really nice to know that no one on the planet had it too. Now, I have spent some time with wp-remix 2 developer edition and I can report that it is good, real good, so good I could nibble its’ ear.

I particularly like how it has so much sexy css built in and you can create new pages and edit the template on the fly and choose which sidebar you want.

There’s some custom code put here and there and that’s whats taken all the time, the rest seems to flow together so easily and I’m really looking forward to adding some great content like the ajax tutorial series and a whole bunch of new nested pags with online tools and scripts.

Here’s an example of the flickr plugin.. following is the most recent picture from flickr that relates to a search for “fifty pence”

using tag of “fifty”

using the tags of this post (dynamic)

using the title of this post (dynamic)

The best thing is, it’ll try and search for the terms given, if nothing comes back then it searches for matches on any of the keywords, failing that, pick the last one on the public feed..

I had a little trouble getting the api to work with my api key but I think I have figured it out…although some of the text searches bring back something that doesn’t look like it relates but it’s got one of the keywords in the description. It’s nice on the front page though and saves me having to find/download/resize/upload ones just for prettying up the home page.

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I finally got around to having a day in front of the pc to do my new theme, I’ve been fiddling and playing about with the template code for ages and it’s really starting to come together!

I’ve even written a few custom plugins for it..

A latest picture from flickr relating to the title of a post on the front page

new lotto results with added links!!!

a custom script include in the header per post (using custom fields)

updated commentluv again

I am pretty sure I’ll get some sort of working theme up by the weekend if I get some more time, the biggest hurdles are done though. The rest is just prettying up.

Hope to see you soon!!

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It’s here! I am proud to reveal my new theme. It has taken a couple of weeks since it’s conception after seeing the curved theme elsewhere to code and it has been worth the wait!

I’ll do a write up for it later in the week but for now, enjoy the wonderness of FiddyP and it’s new theme!

Watch out for the new series of AJAX tutorials, regular story and photo posts, contests, plugins, tutorials and much much more coming this way over the next few weeks.

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I am so excited! This weekend there will be some changes to FiddyP.

I am having a theme professionally designed by an Indonesian designer and it’s looking really good! It’ll have curved corners, drop shadows and double span sidebars hovering over two fixed height sidebars! yey.

The guys name is Sunaryo and I am most impressed with his ability, he has been able to create a fantastic theme based on a screen grab I made of a theme I liked. I gave him a bit of a headache by asking for all sorts of extras like a double sidebar with double span divs and to top it all, a single sidebar’d single post page and more. I’ve seen a great mockup picture and there’s even a demo of it working, coded completely from scratch from a jpeg image. awesome.

here’s a little peek of the main page..

and one of the single post page..

Why a single post page with only one sidebar? Well, I wanted to do things backwards. I know the general rule is to plaster your adverts on single post pages as they are the ones that get linked to by the search engines but on a few blogs that I have seen, I have really liked a single post page that has just the information on it and not too many flashy things saying “buy me!” it encouraged me to look around the blog a bit more to see what’s there.

This is what I want to do with FiddyP;

• I want to provide valuable information in a format that will be easy on the eyes with a little bit of personality thrown in.
• Provide a ‘fun’ place to go to read tutorials and learn things that can make life easier
• Run contests that encourage community participation
• Throw the limelight on other blogs that I particularly like
• Have a series of posts that run concurrently like an AJAX series of tutorials taking someone from ‘hello world’ to a fully functional useful plugin
• Regular guest spots for writers with talent
• Real reviews of products that I use, not just kiss-arsey-buy-it-so-I-earn reviews, good ones that also mention bad points!
• more… MORE!

I hope to have something up by the weekend (oo-er!) so if you visit, please be patient while I tweak, tweak, tweak!

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I have a notebook that I write ideas down on that I carry around with me for when ideas pop into my head and it’s got quite a few for FiddyP. One of the first things I wanted was a unique design, I was going to make my own but I scored some commercial projects recently and so I couldn’t put the time in to do it myself. I now have a designer working on the project and I can’t wait to see the results!

Recently, I stumbled on a blog called “The gospel according to Rhys” (maker of the Technorati tag generator). I really liked the style of the blog and his writing. He’s got a good sense of humour and his posts about his trip to Europe were hilarious! I noticed that he had advertising available on his site and jumped in to get a whole years worth!

I’ve also asked him if he could bring some of his humour over to here now and again, he’s going to think about something to post about and maybe he can do a guest post here in the near future. If you get a chance, go and visit his site and take a look around. He’s Wales’ premier blogger!

Another fine blogger who I have approached about posting here is someone you might know due to her excellent talent for short stories (check out two amazing 55 word shorts here). AntiBarbie is her pen name, she has had a lively following on her blog at Antibarbie.net and I think having a monthly short story here would be a great feature!

I’d like to get some more guest posts here when the new theme goes live and start participating in some more photography memes. I’d love to get some pictures that are as high quality as Opal’s Flower and Bee shots at Vegan Momma and I’d like to improve CommentLuv even more so it can act as a plugin on the sidebar showing the last posts of recent commenters. Like the blogrush widget but just for people that comment on the blog, it will also get it’s own options page to allow people the choice of what is used for the text of the plugin in the comment and below it.

For my posts, I have had a wonderful time with a couple of AJAX books recently and I’ve come up with some super easy tutorials that can run for a few weeks for each stage and gradually take you from ‘hello world’ to a working program to include on your blog.

More contests will come this way too, I’m trying to source some good prizes for the future. I prefer prizes to cash. What sort of prizes would you like to see here? Technology or something else like vouchers for online stores…?

Time to open the comments… what would you like to see here?

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