Today (this afternoon) I worked on the WordPress theme of this site a bit because I could not dismiss some small shortfalls or deficiencies I noticed.
Site Icon
This is a new feature added recently to the WordPress core since version 4.3. For details please have a look at WordPress 4.3 Beta 3 Adds Site Icon Feature to the Customizer (WP TAVERN).
I do not know if the site icon feature is well documented already, my findings so far are:
- You can allow users to upload and edit an image to be used for favicon or site icon. Once user upload the site icon image whose recommended size is 500 x 500, the WordPress will be able to output in the header of the icon in 3 different types (as of writing): 32x, 192px and one for Apple devices.
- Developer will still need to do one easy task. Add one template tag in the head element block of the header (where link tags are usually output): <?php wp_site_icon(); ?>.
- For code details, please read a change log published at WordPress trac site.
Body Text Styling
In short, I fixed margin and list styling of OL and UL tags. They are one of crucially important points that needs to be qualified before releasing premium WordPress themes, in my opinion. Because those are what users use often.
There has been a recurring quest for a WordPress theme properly designed by someone with proper understanding of typography. I remind you in advance: I am neither an expert nor professional in this domain. But I can tell if the design is good or bad.
You can now easily find any themes with descent typography in front page. Once you apply the style to your blog content, you are suddenly aware that there are even much more work to do on styling in body text block of your blog post pages. Since the CSS was made only to make the demo contents good instead of minding users using it everyday, there are miserably missing parts in the critical part of your site: blog posts and regular pages.
Take UL and OL tags. They are nowadays frequently used not only for bullet lists but also navigation menu and even slides. I am not even sure if the original intent was to let the element tags serve those many purposes when the “creators” created the internet. Maybe because of the current de facto omnipotent all in one role list tags have had to take on, margin and styles and all those necessary stylings for blog content space are taken away by default in some themes. I am assuming that theme makers are conveniently expecting users (users might want to call it a wish or hope) to add “appropriate” class names in every one of element tags used for particular purposes or functions.
WordPress text editor is not fit for adding class names to elements. WordPress by default strips attributes in tags. So the add-by-yourself approach becomes unrealistic.
The theme developers might “expect” users to use shortcodes. In my honest opinion who cares. From user point of view, users are expecting to be able to start using products they newly purchased from the very first second without any problems. User just want to focus on writing. Even there are hundreds of nice features, if they cannot use only few of them to get their needs fulfilled without loosing focus, the features are totally wasted.
Adding an element to tinyMCE is another good idea, however it is some difficult work to get anything working and maintained in tinyMCE visual editor. Maybe this is where a gem is hidden. Business opportunity.
Thanks for reading. Have a nice day 
The post Today’s Site Improvement:
Site icon and body text styling appeared first on Befive.Info.