“Art Direction,” the plugin, is now up to 0.2.2
I’ve added support for stylesheets of the name style-POSTID.css in your theme’s template directory – thanks to a tip on CSS Tricks
Since this release was supposed to fix some problems with different caching plugins, I ask that you all to give it a whirl and send me your feedback.
ディレクテッド・デザイン 〜Directed Design〜
Description:
ウェブデザイン、アートディレクション、そして最近生まれつつあるコンセプト、「ディレクテッド・デザイン」についてのプレゼン。ディレクテッド・デザインの力を借りてサイト上でのユニークな体験を生み出すための考察、ツール、ヒントやコツなどを紹介します。
訳注: ディレクテッド・デザインとは、一様に画一的（またはランダム）なデザインをあてがうのではなく、編集者の手を経たコンテンツに合わせてそれに合うデザインを提供するという考え方のことです。
(Translation thanks to Naoko.)
In english: A look at web design, art direction, and the emergence of “directed design.”
He said it, not me ;) And, I couldn’t be happier to help Zeldman rock out with WordPress.
Noel Jackson, a lead designer/developer at Automattic (the people who make WordPress), is my WordPress boss and my boy.
Wow nice! Put that on your resume. :D
I took this image about 5 minutes prior to the start of Noel’s Wordcamp NYC presentation. In that time span after the photo was taken many more people walked into the classroom which caused Noel’s presentation to be standing room only. Also the only open seat (as viewed in the 360) was my seat because I was taking this photograph. (Note there were several others rooms presenting Wordpress workshops during the same time period.)
via Wordcamp NYC 360 (w/ Noel of Automattic) « Yellowecho.com.
I’ll be speaking at WordCamp Fukuoka on February 28th. I’m really excited about this one. See you there!
via WordBench.
We are looking forward to your coming to Fukuoka!
Tomorrow at 6PM, I’ll be talking about P2 at the Ferndale WordPress Meetup. I’ll be talking about the new P2 theme, how it was created, and showing off the new features of the soon to be released version 1.1.
I’m there right now.
When is 1.1 going to be released?
If you’re a design geek like me, you might be interested to know that the VideoPress logo (as well as all of VideoPress.com) is set in the beautiful Museo family of typefaces, designed by your fellow WordPress.com bloggers at the exljbris Font Foundry (exljbris.wordpress.com).
Mainly, the redesign is content focused. After so many years as a web designer, and after creative directing so many influential projects, I naturally considered doing a wide, three-column, ultra-modern design—something cool, detached, polished, and glowing with rich media and fancy-pants sliding-drawer JavaScript effects. Not that there’s anything wrong with those things. In the right circumstances, those things can rock hard. But this site is mainly about my writing. So I crafted a simple look that encourages reading and hearkens back to this site’s early years.
And, it was my pleasure helping him turn his HTML gold into WordPress magic.
Well done Noel!
Over at Automattic, we’ve been hard at work on P2, a, dare I say, revolutionary “theme” for WordPress. I’m very proud to have been involved with the development and design of it – I work with some amazing people and this has been an especially fascinating project.
I put “theme” in quotes, because P2 is not just a “theme.” It is a way of thinking. Specifically about “themes,” but also about what WordPress is – it’s obviously much more than a CMS or a blogging system. Calling P2 a “theme” just doesn’t do it justice.
As trial will show, it’s done a lot for Automattic alone. In just the past few months our modes of communication have drastically changed – more so than I would have expected – all because of P2. Also, our productivity and transparency (both internally and externally) have grown fantastically.
WordPress “themes” are finally moving away from set formulas to attacking problems and adpating to workflows… they are doing what design is supposed to do: solve problems. Themes are becoming applications. And, something tells me, we’re going to see some amazing things from the WordPress community in the near future. I’m excited.
Get P2 at WordPress.com or for your self-hosted blog.
Thanks for the work you guys have been doing! I’m in the process of testing out the new theme on a site for my church’s youth group. We’ve been looking for a solution that would allow for this kind of flow of conversation to talk about current topics, lessons, and activity updates. What I’m doing is implementing this theme AND a membership plugin. Sounds like the simplicity of the theme will help make this happen for us!
As always, I’m looking forward to the next new thing from my friends @ WordPress and Automattic!
[...] am on May 9, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply Tags: P2 Here’s what Noel has to say about P2! http://jcksn.com/2009/05/06/p2-is-the-future/ [...]
Noel, great work on this. Absolutely fantastic. Is there any plans or is it already possible for me to have my twitter stream automagically post to my blog using P2? I do this on my FaceBook page using a FaceBook app already, but it would be nice to do it to my own blog also.
Really looking forward to hearing you speak at WordCamp Columbus next week.
Thanks Jason! You can use one of the many twitter plugins out there, or write your own, like I did. TwitterTools is pretty popular, but there are some simpler ones too.
I don’t think people will realize the coolness factor behind P2 until they actually start using it. Revolutionary is the right descriptor when it comes to defining it in terms of a “theme.” What a cool project. Kudos!
Very inventive!
Thomas Dolby runs an awesome blog that is WordPress powered.
… Don’t worry this is what you do with old master tapes. The oxide likes to detach itself from the backing, and if you don’t bake it back on, big clumps fall off on the tape heads the moment you try to play it. This restoration process was only discovered a few years ago. Up until then I had pay a large annual rental fee to store my tapes in the basement at Abbey Rd, at what was thought to be the ideal temperature and moisture.
That basement has served over the years as a bomb shelter, butchers’ repository, and storage place for the Sgt Pepper’s 4-tracks and mellotron. Once EMI discovered that tapes stored down there were actually falling apart, and needed to be baked to be playable, they offered a ‘restoration service’ to artists and producers, charged at a high hourly rate. So they got a bit more cash out of me for that. But when I found out that the recipe was quite simple and could be easily done in a domestic oven, I switched to doing it myself. …
Once upon a time, I created web pages with some WYSIWYG editor created by Corel. It was horrible, but it allowed me to make my site look however I wanted it to. And, at the time, that meant really ugly. But I was happy as a clam, running home from school (yeah, this was a *long* time ago) I couldn’t wait to play art director.
So, along comes the CMS revolution. It automated content, but made it harder for people to customize their sites. The art director in all of us died a little. That may have been a good thing… *cough* MySpace *cough* But in all honesty, control is what people crave and need, automation was what they thought they needed ;)
Empowering users with the ability to play art director and control as much as they can, from within a theme, is the future. And without doubt, Jason Santa Maria was one of the first people to really pull this off and make us all think a little bit harder. Oh yeah, I made a plugin to help out with this too!
Inline with that thinking, we need to empower users with the ability to not only control *how* the site looks, but *what* it does. We need to think about themes as more than the paint on the walls, but as the structure of the building. WordPress is about more than words. Photoblogs, videoblogs, tumblelogs, stores, applications – we need more diversity in not just the look, but the type of themes in the WordPress world. I’m not sure “theme” or “template” even covers what it is a “theme” does.
The future is looking at the past and understanding what made the web so interesting in the beginning, and then figuring out how we can help WordPress users do just that.
Your thoughts about the future of WordPress themes are truly inspiring.
This is the kind of forward thinking I like to see in theme authoring.
[...] off, Noel has an extraordinary post on what he thinks about the future (of WordPress themes): Empowering users with the ability to play art director and control as much as they can, from [...]
[...] Noel Jackson weighs in [...]
“Art Direction,” is a WordPress plugin I wrote to create per-post styles for increased control over the art-direction of your WP powered site. I’ve released version 0.2.1 which is a huge improvement over prior versions. Versions prior to 0.2.1 produced invalid code in some instances, due to the style tag not being valid when placed anywhere except inside the head. As of 0.2.1 all code output is placed in the head of your template. Rockin’ huh? :)
[...] contentment and satisfaction. Here are some of the Wordpress Plugins I use : Akismet – a free “Art Direction” 0.2.1? Release – jcksn.com 01/08/2009 “Art Direction,” is a WordPress plugin I wrote to create per-post styles [...]
Update: Version 0.2 is now available. This fixes a small bug that may result in duplicate styles.
I wrote a plugin (it’s in beta) available over here: WordPress › Art Direction. The tagline is “Per-post styles for new age art direction.”
Automation is the king of convenience. It’s also a killer of creativity and quality. Examples: MP3 vs. Vinyl, Transistors/Diodes vs. Tubes, Xerox vs. Letterpress, Digital vs. Film. The newer technologies allow a quicker route to (perceived) gratification, but the older technologies always deliver a superior end result.
Web sites have gone from home-grown concoctions of HTML thrown together with bits of glue and tape, to vast content management systems automating the entire process. It’s lowered the barrier of entry for publishing on the Web, but it’s also sucked away the creativity.
I’ve been in love with blogging and feel that CMS’s are the way of the future. But, I’ve also been feeling an ever increasing homogenization on the web – in part because of the low barrier of entry for publishing, and the finite amount of designs available to most individuals – and the static nature of these designs.
Earlier this year two things happened on the web that opened my eyes. I designed a theme for WordPress.com, Monotone. It took colors from an image and used them to surround the image and create a somewhat dynamic and unique experience for each entry. A nice blend of dynamic and static qualities.
Elsewhere, a little after the launch of Monotone, Jason Santa Maria redesigned his site using EE – the horror! ;) – to give him more control over each entry’s design. It was a brilliant use of technology!
But, I don’t want to pay for my content management system when there is already a superior, Open Source, and extensible system available. (I’m talking about WordPress.)
So, I wrote a plugin to provide me with the ability to add styles/javascript/whatever I wanted to each entry, I call it Art Direction. It’s in beta right now. So, help me make it better, so we can all enjoy a little more flexibility and creativity.
Caveat: it may invalidate your code, depending on how you use the plugin (due to inline styles). This is a temporary problem.
Hey man!
This is Brilliant! Ever since I saw Jason’s presentation at An Event Apart SF this summer I was thinking about this. I’m eager to try out your approach and, even though I’m not a programmer, I’ll try to pitch in my feedback!
Keep it up and take care!
Great job, I’ll be employing this in some work that I have currently in progress. Cheers mate!
Awesome plugin. Sure beats manually going in via FTP to find the unique id / class for each post, then styling to taste. Will a future update offer the option to write styles to a global stylesheet? art-direction.css in your themes directory?
I will be implementing this plugin on my wp site immediately ;)
Thanks Noel.
Excellent! I can’t wait to give this a try on upcoming projects.
This is amazing. Originally a print designer (mainly magazines), I can’t wait to use your plugin to give life to various ‘articles’ on an online magazine site I run.
I will be sure to provide feedback once I’ve given it a run.
Thanks.
I like the idea and definatley don’t want to bring down your idea for a name, however, when I saw this in my reader, I thought it was a plugin for some type or Artwork Gallery or something. Just wanted to give you the heads up. Look forward to trying it.
[...] Automattic colleague Noel has released a new plugin for WordPress called Art Direction, now in beta: Automation is the king of convenience. It’s also a killer of creativity and quality [...]
Hi Noel,
Great plugin! I’ve been looking around for something to do this over the last few days, and was pleasantly surprised to find out you made it so recently.
While troubleshooting some CSS issues, I noticed that my style was being inserted into the page twice. I discovered that this is caused by a bug:
(starting on line 16)
if( is_single() or is_page() )
echo str_replace( ‘#postid’, $post->ID, get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘art_direction_single’, true) );
echo str_replace( ‘#postid’, $post->ID, get_post_meta($post->ID, ‘art_direction_global’, true) );
Since there are no brackets surrounding the if statement, the second line is run regardless of the if condition. This will cause the global styles to appear twice in the front-page listing!
-C
@chromakode Thanks for the note. It was a bug. Version 0.2 is out and addresses that issue.
Thanks for all the great input and encouragement! I really appreciate it and hope the plugin proves useful!
[...] WordPress “Art Direction” Plugin This new WP plugin, currently in beta, allows you to individualized styles for each post (ala Jason Santa Maria’s redesign of his personal website). [...]
[...] WordPress “Art Direction” Plugin, from Automattician Noel Jackson. Basically allows you to do what Joe Santa Maria does for his blog without all the custom code and template hacking, just a simple plugin. (0) PreviousPost [...]
Excellent news…been looking for something like this for a while.
[...] Art Direction Plugin [...]
Wow very cool! I just wrote a tutorial on using a colors.css file to hold all of the colors for you design, which allows you to change color schemes really quick. People have been seeking ways to vary colors based on post, this is a really awesome direction for this!! Thanks so much! Wish I could have told people about this before the tutorial.
I am really, really interested to tear into this one. I have been wondering about this for a long time, and glad that someone jumped up and is making it happen. I will install and play around with this, and get you feedback as I progress with it.
Thanks!
This looks great, if you can work out the inline/validation problems it will be superb!
[...] Wordpress Art Direction Plugin [...]
sounds like a great plug in!
Wow – I wrote a plugin to do this about a year ago and I’ve only used it a couple of times and never bothered to release it – now I find out that there are lots of people wanting this. Doh! Well done.
Actually, the technology transition was from tubes to *transistors*, not transformers.
@chrys Thanks for that!
Very nice. I’ve been using custom fields to give my posts a unique look.
My question for this plug in is: are you using custom fields? If so, then in table: wp_postmeta, the meta_key is defined as varchar(255). How would this plugin handle key values that exceed 255 chars?
Thanks,
Wonderful. This will enable me to write more tutorials and show examples without bloating my style files and forever slowing down my front page.
That seems like a really coo feature!
Nice stuff. Really:)
However, I don’t agree with your opinion about Expression Engine. Comparing Wordpress to Expression Engine tells me you don’t respect/know the strengths of each CMS and the weaknesses. EE can handle far greater complexity and flexibility of content management to the (control panel) user(s) than WP. In this age of free software it is easy to loose sight of the simple fact that you get what you pay for. That said I love WP and EE both for what they are.
[...] about? color manipulation and art direction in themes with? PHP. Noel recently came out with the Art Direction plugin, which allows for custom per post styling, i.e. allowing you to control the look of each [...]
Thanks for this. A library of styles would be helpful.
[...] Art Direction provide the ability to add styles to each entry (tags: plugins wordpress templates) [...]
Nice! I’ve already said to Matt(ma.tt) thanks for providing a link to that.
Cheers.
Cool plug-in, but I had to uninstall it from my site. It was the cause of a blank line error (http://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/error/WPBlankLine.html) that broke my RSS.
[...] which seems to trouble so many Wordpress users on the ‘net. Finally figured out that the Art Direction plugin was the culprit. Luckily, it was not something that I used very [...]
Thanks for this. A library of styles would be helpful.
However, I don’t agree with your opinion about Expression Engine. Comparing Wordpress to Expression Engine tells me you don’t respect/know the strengths of each CMS and the weaknesses. EE can handle far greater complexity and flexibility of content management to the (control panel) user(s) than WP. In this age of free software it is easy to loose sight of the simple fact that you get what you pay for. That said I love WP and EE both for what they are.
Awesome! Another print designer looking forward to seeing how this works out. Imagine, designing articles!
Great work, thanks a million! I’ll be sure to drop you some feedback once i’ve given it a run.
[...] Wordpress Art Direction plugin [...]
[...] talk about color manipulation and art direction in themes with PHP. Noel recently came out with the Art Direction plugin, which allows for custom per post styling, i.e. allowing you to control the look of each [...]
An incredibly n00b question (I apologize, but this is more direct than me stumbling through it with a headache on my own):
what do I write in the single page or global code boxes to create pages? Could you please explain in condescending/simplified language to a beginner how this process works?
thank you…
Apologies in advance for the the n00b question, but:
what precisely do I put in the global and single page code fields? do I merely hit the insert tag buttons and a pagination system will automatically create a numbering sequence, or is there (most likely) more involved?
Any and all responses tinged with frustrated exasperation at my lack of plugin/css are welcome, as long as actual guidance/help is also included.
many thanks…
[...] often-overlooked casualty of the content management system is art direction. While there may be some systems that allow for it, this is still a lot to ask of a client if they do not have in-house designers. Could making style [...]
[...] Art Direction WordPress plugin [...]
[...] out Noel’s Art Direction plugin for WordPress, which provides the ability to add styles or JavaScript to each entry, without a lot [...]
100,000 downloads of WordPress 2.7 in 20 hours, and the pace is picking up.
WordPress 2.7 has been released. It’s awesome. But, I’ll let the video do the talking:
Where did the past 12 days go?
I’m not quite sure, but I am glad that Ms. Moss was here to comfort you.
–
The last week I spent time with my possie, the Automattic crew. It was awesome getting to live, work, and play with them for a while. It kind of felt like the Real World, geek edition. I was hoping we’d have had some confessions of invalid code or unicode debauchery, to go along with the code filled week, but no luck.
My favorite part of the trip: getting schooled by Nikolay on UTF-16.
–
Without further awkwardness, a polaroid of Zooey Deschanel:
And just for kicks, John Lennon.
–
BTW, someone remind me to cleanup the design around here… ya know, when it gets bad enough.
no, not Zooey, i was just watching Elf the other day, and she looks lovely in that film, but i did not know who she was till i googled her the other day after the film, then i stumble on your site whist looking for something else entirely, with a lovely shot of her…
I’m starting to use mycrocosm and found that their dev blog is hosted on WordPress!
Mycrocosm is a web site that makes it possible for people to use statistical graphs and other visual language tools for expressive social communication. In particular it provides an alternative to purely text based micro-blogging software. We encourage our users to creatively use the visual forms we have provided to express whatever they may want about themselves or the world they are living in. This can range from keeping track of daily activities (What are you doing? — but visually) to expressing opinions, making jokes or any other form of social interaction.
Jesse, 
Danny and 25 others are discussing. 
Chris Coyier 9:53 am on 26 Feb 2010 Permalink
0.2.2 worked well in my tests, upgrading to 0.2.3 failed to activate, see:
http://img.skitch.com/20100226-quhnp2u63yh4b9hci8na11628b.jpg
noel 12:02 am on 28 Feb 2010 Permalink
We’re now up to 0.2.4 with a fix for the 0.2.3 and gettext string updates.