Comments on: WordPress Needs an Integrated Design Gallery

By: Firefly

Firefly — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 17:40:26 +0000

Yes.. It is driving me crazt that there is no standard gallery.. i can’t find anyone to help me set one up

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 08:42:42 +0000

Hi, just surfed in. I enjoyed looking around your web site. This site has been very useful to me so far and I have barely scrathed the surface of it.

By: JimSpot

JimSpot — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 19:42:05 +0000

Interesting idea….
Obvious Diversion - WordPress Needs an Integrated Design Gallery WordPress, a very capable content publishing system, is very ugly when…

By: Mark IJbema

Mark IJbema — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 18:01:03 +0000

Some sort of regulation will defenitely be needed. Think of the security problems alone you would get if you don’t. I’m assuming MSIE here, which has the expression-scripting possibility in css, and iirc mozilla has something similar. It’s quite easy to make a site use a background image which has the cookie as parameter. Now what happens? You choose the stylesheet from the admin interface somewhere, and then the stylesheet changes. At that point the image with the cookie parameter gets requested, and the evil stylesheet creator can access your blog using the cookie.

Another thing is that you’d probably want images to go along with the stylesheet, so purely a stylesheet won’t do i’d say.

Furthermore you probably want to be able to fill in a few parameters per stylesheet (like a logo). Just some thought. In general a good idea though, but i really think reviewing before adding is needed.

By: Joni

Joni — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 01:31:54 +0000

I think it’s an excellent idea. And it’s a great way to get some exposure for oneself as well.

By: Clay

Clay — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 12:31:54 +0000

I like the idea a lot. In fact, there’s something like this that’s already in place for the phpBB community. Check out this site and the way the bar remains at the top. Choose a style, and it is applied to a mirror of their own forum. (It can be slow, at times, due to volume.) Wordpress should have a default install up and running, with a few Lorum Ipsum articles up, and a similar style chooser.

You could argue that the long-term health and size of the community relies on something like this becoming available.

By: Brian Poirier

Brian Poirier — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 03:43:47 +0000

I kinda like the idea.
Due to so many hacks/changes being done to the index.php files (by plug ins, alterations, etc), it should be left alone and only the CSS file be played with/swapped.

I also think the templates should be free/GPLd. Inserting the payment/fee parts into adds unwelcome complexity, and even expense (for Wordpress also - accounting, taxes, and reporting would have to be handled). Unforced/voluntary Donation-Ware might be nice.

By: Christian

Christian — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:33:15 +0000

Perhaps the solution is that the css you submit must validate, but self-policing does work. There can be a ton of bad designs and they can stay in the system. The important part is that the system is able to tell, through user ratings and the designers reputation, what designs are worth displaying for use.

By: the absent student

the absent student — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 14:24:25 +0000

The risk with self-policing is that you end up with something like Blogskins, full of teenagers ripping table-based designs off each other and violating copyright all over the place. Hosting is cheap enough and Wordpress easy enough to install that you can’t exclude that possibility.

If, however, you make everyone use the same basic index page you ensure xhtml validity and the project becomes a version of the Alex King Style Gallery (hopefully with a more flexible index.php allowing for genuine three-column layouts). I would be willing to contribute to that, but I honestly can’t see users being willing to pay for it.

By: Christian

Christian — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:25:52 +0000

I don’t think anyone needs to approve any designs. Any design can be submitted and the community will self police them by rating them.

As for getting designers on board, I really think this is a “if you build it, they will come” scenario. Look how many people already are throwing their effort into it.