Optional Necessity - Serendipity - Templates

Kinetic version 1.2 released

nospam@example.com (Don Chambers) — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 16:18:52 -0700

The Serendipity template Kinetic has been upgraded to version 1.2.

This new version of Kinetic offers even greater power and flexibility to your Serendipity powered magazine, or newspaper styled website, in addition to the extensive featureset bundled into the original Kinetic release as well as the previous upgrade, Kinetic ver 1.1.

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Custom meta details for Serendipity static pages

nospam@example.com (Don Chambers) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:35:00 -0700

Your site's content can rank higher in search engine results through the use of page-specific title element, meta descriptions and meta keywords. The Serendipity HTML META-tags plugin simplifies this task for entries, as I discussed in Better search results with meta details.

Unfortunately, the current version of the HTML META-tag plugin cannot emit meta details for static pages, but static pages can have custom properties. We can use these custom static page properties to emit unique meta details for each static page, just like the HTML META-tag plugin does for entries.

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New AddThis button code for Serendipity Templates

nospam@example.com (Don Chambers) — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:57:13 -0700

Social bookmarking has long been popular on nearly any type of website, especially with sites featuring regularly updated content such as news sites and blogs. Social bookmarking allows visitors to remember, rate and recommend content through a number of channels, including Facebook, Delicious, Digg and many others. While many sites prefer to use numerous icons and links to each service available, I prefer to use the single point of service through AddThis.

Launched in 2006, addthis has become the #1 bookmarking and sharing button on the Internet. Many serendipity developers and website owners have incorporated the addthis code, or "widget", into their serendipity templates. I personally added it to a number of my own templates, and this code has been a part of the current serendipity default template Bulletproof since its initial release. Addthis has maintained compatibility with older versions of their scripts, but I decided it was time to update the script, especially since they just released a new version today.

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Kinetic template version 1.1 released

nospam@example.com (Don Chambers) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:03:16 -0700

Kinetic has been updated to include a number of new features, many of which were recommended by current users of this news and magazine template framework for Serendipity. The new features provide greater power, configuration flexibility, and site accessibility.
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Kinetic as a magazine template

nospam@example.com (Don Chambers) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:02:00 -0700

Kinetic is Serendipity template designed to publish content for news or magazine styled template. However, what exactly does the format "magazine" mean?

When Kinetic was originally released, the screenshots and demo primarily focussed on using Kinetic as a news template. Being a news template, one would expect a front page presentation organized by categories. This is a key concept of a news template. But Kinetic can display content in much the same manner with less emphasis on categories, and more focus on the content. This is what I will call a "magazine" format, and Kinetic can do this easily by making a few simple changes to its configuration options.
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Kinetic - a magazine and news template for Serendipity

nospam@example.com (Don Chambers) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:03:07 -0700

Your Serendipity powered website is structured using many categories. You would like to summarize those entries on your front page according to each category, but the default Serendipity presentation merely lists those entries in date order - most recent first. What can you do?

Announcing Kinetic. Kinetic is a Serendipity template designed to present your content in much the same way as might be seen on a newspaper or magazine website.
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Additional sidebars for Serendipity templates

nospam@example.com (Don Chambers) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:15:00 -0700

Serendipity templates utilize a page structure that includes a main content pane and sidebar containers, often positioned left and/or right of the main content. But what if you want a top or bottom "sidebar"? How about more than two?

How do you code that information into your template, and present - and secure - it to other users of your custom serendipity templates if they are publically distributed? Template configuration and Smarty code can easily provide the solution for any of your custom serendipity templates.
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New serendipity comment format

nospam@example.com (Don Chambers) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:31:01 -0700

I have styled most aspects of serendipity templates. Single and multi-entry pages, static pages, sidebars, headers, footers and even archives. However, in the back of my mind, and in various partially coded versions, has been the idea of a different format for entry comments than what I have typically used. I have played around with odd vs. even comments, different styles for author comments and several different methods of showing comment meta information, but none of my experimentation fully accomplished my objectives. Serendipity itself also presents a rare functionality - threaded display of comments and the ability to reply to a specific comment, or delete a specific comment if logged in as an administrator. I think I finally arrived at a great looking new comment format for my serendipity templates.

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