Header

Incase you haven’t noticed I have amde a couple of alterations to the header of my blog. I’ve wanted to do it for a while just not had time, but with handing in a project yesterday I now have slightly more free time than i did have. I’ve had a little tinker with the header and now have some rotating images up there, I will add to these as I find more suitable images, but for now there are just the two images.

I’m not totally satisfied with it at the moment, I want to do something but I don’t konw how to do it. If you hover over the main title, you will see the text changes colour and has a background colour to it as well. Now I want to add a bit of padding to this, so the background is a bit wider than the text, but can’t seem to get it to work. I would also like to have the title look like that all the time. Does anyone know who to do this in K2? If you could let me know I would really appreciate it.

Hi Phil, I don’t think it will work exactly as you want as there is quite a bit of padding above the text of the header area meaning that when you add the padding it will cover over your text…

I will pop some code up for you later as I am nipping out and only passing by.

O, and by the way, I like what you have done with the place, it looks very good! .

Thanks Aidan, I’m still not totally happy about it, need some better images up top. Theres more ideas in the pipeline, looking to devlop this place a bit more now my time is a bit more available for a few days!

Hey, it’s looking pretty good I noticed you changed it from the time I read the post 3 mins ago to the time I wrote this comment, I like it better now. From what ben says, your very talented so I can’t wait to see the final product.

Thanks Nick, it is starting to become a bit more how I like it, I want to move away from stock K2. Would appreciate it if you guys could give me some feedback about the inline asides. I’m thinking of seperating them from the main content but I’m not sure, what do you guys think? Do you like blogs that have asides inline more than blogs with seperated asides? do you miss the asides if they aren’t inline? Does the inline asides dilute the main content too much? All feedback would be greatly appreciated!

I like the inline asides, mainly because I do end up missing them when they are in the sidebar. And no I don’t think it dilutes it, I think it adds to it.

Hmmm, ok Nick, thanks. This blogging malarky is really making me think at the moment, really enjoying it too. So much so I’m on the verge of laying £15/$30 down on a Mint license.

Phil, I’m a fan of the new header but I think it could use some fine tuning. I’d change the a:hover attribute of your header text to not have a background color. It seems a little messy with the images. also perhaps avoid using header images that have words in them, cuz it seems to clutter up your title and tag line.

I upgraded my licence of mint today. It is a great way to spend a little bit of money. It’s half toy and half stats.

Thanks for the input Shaun. Yeh I know the images aren’t best and the tagline is lost a bit on some of them, trying to find some nicer images.

YEh Mint looks increasingly alluring everytime I check out the website!

Perhaps you do not need the code after all! Sorry for the delay in reply . After looking at it late last night I came to the conclusion that what you wanted to do wouldn’t work properly as I tested it with mine and it messed up completely.

I like the new changes, they are looking very good. You blog is evolving!!

I actually have a little request… Is it possible, when you have time, to inform me as to how you did your inline asides?
For some reason when I activate inline asides they look exactly like normal entries hence why mine are sidebar asides at the moment.
I can change they’re appearance for when you view the post but not for the main page of the blog.

If I haven’t explained it very well just let me know!

@ Aidan: Inline Asides are easy to set up on your main page.

- I put together a How-to here.
- WordPress has a tutorial here.
- Ben @ openswitch did one here.

Aidan: The K2 inline asides are customised using these two pieces of CSS


#primary .k2-asides .entry-head .metalink {
font-size: 1.4em;
}

.single #primary .k2-asides .entry-content {
font-size: 1.5em;
color: #999;
}


I used another piece of CSS to do take away the Meta details. I actually want to alter my inline asides so they are more like those found at Kottke’s or Ben’s but I’ve yet to get round to doing it.

Thanks Shawn however those guides are for themes which don’t have it built in, K2 does. Thanks for the links though, I am very grateful.

@Phil - Are those the two bits of CSS from your stylesheet? If so how is the left border specified on the asides?

Err, no sorry, those are fromt he default stylesheet in K2, these are my chunks from the style sheet


#primary .k2-asides h3 {
font-size: 1.6em;
font-weight: normal;
}

#primary .k2-asides {
border-left: 5px solid #0D1218;
padding-left: 15px;
}


and this is what I used to remove the meta data, keep in mind it means it doesn’t display on the psot page as well.


div.k2-asides div.entry-head small.entry-meta {
display: none;
}


Just out of interest, Shaun or Ben, do either of you know how I could go about colour coding categories and post titles in K2?

Ah that’s even better to see that they’re part of the default K2 stylesheet, therefore I should be able to specify the attributes I want. Thanks for that!! . However first I need to sort out my problem with inline asides and recent comments.

Thanks again