Okay, I’ve done my “Bah, Cupid” bit for Valentine’s Day. But it got me thinking about the past, when romance, or potential romance, was still a part of my life. And I remembered, as I occasionally do, what still ranks as the most thoughtful, romantic gift I ever received.
I had a male acquaintance that I was growing very fond of but, being very gun shy about romance and commitment, I’d forbidden him to use the “L-word.” So one day, out of the blue (which is so much more delightful than an anticipated gift on, say, Valentine’s Day), he showed up at my office bearing a dozen gorgeous roses. Not red ones. Certainly not. Red roses mean “love.” These were spectacular yellow roses, with red edges. Yellow for “friendship,” but kissed with red.
I fell so hard for that man …
That sounds so nice PT! 😀
For one of the few times in my life, I was speechless.
No offense but, knowing how we hermits are, I’m LMFAO at that mental image!!! 😉
😆
I visited your site for another reason but I’m glad I caught this post. I had forgotten yellow roses bloomed friendship.
That other reason…I read your response today to the release of a new theme for WordPress.com. One that featured pull quotes. I use pull quotes, drop caps, even columns on my pitiful little poetry site. They’re just a combination of CSS and HTML tags. If you have the custom design option WordPress.com offers, the code is not difficult to implement. This page http://1xpad.com/about-3/ … it’s hosted WordPress.com …anyway take a look and if you’d like, I’ll walk you through it. I like pull quotes too.
Hi Doug. Thank you so much for coming by and offering to help with pull quotes.
I have the CSS upgrade and most of what I do with it I have figured out by trial and error. I have only the most general idea about how it works overall, based on some prior experience with PageMaker formatting.
I found the code for drop caps somewhere, and occasionally use it in a post (usually too lazy to dig it up and employ it on a regular basis). And I’ve done the two column thing once or twice; again, I find it very “labor intensive.” I looked at the code you used on your page, and also found some good suggestions here: http://webdesign.about.com/od/csstutorials/qt/advanced-pull-quotes.htm
As I understand it, you would add this in a post much as you would add the drop cap code or the two-columns code. Correct? Or can you add it to your blog’s CSS stylesheet and then just use something like in your posts? This would be great, but I’ve no idea how to go about it. More trial-and-error, I guess.
At least I see now how I can do it in individual posts if I really want to (said she without having actually tried it … ), but like the other embellishments, I may be too lazy to bother with it very often.
I wish WordPress would add something like a notepad on our editing pages where we could keep bits of code to copy-and-paste as needed.
Hmm, took a stab at it and failed. Guess I’m clueless after all.
Oh, I did it!! Found some another article that gave me the final clue (http://wpjourno.com/how-to-add-pull-quotes-in-your-wordpress-posts/) and it worked! Now I just need to figure out exactly how I want to style my pull quotes. Cool. Thanks for the inspiration!
It shows up in Chrome, but not in Firefox or Safari. I’ll worry about it tomorrow.
Ok, as I see this you have 3 types of pages to work with this template. The start page..newest and featured stuff. Your comment page. And the archive page. I’m not sure all 3 page types will show the end results of these short codes as opposed to the code proper. You’ve worked with them…so you might know.
These CSS codes come from and old html template I have. I simply cut and pasted them in their entirety to get the results you saw on my wordpress.com hosted site. The Drop Caps, as you will see, contain CSS code for four variations of drop caps inherent in the that old template. Color codes and stuff designed for that specific template. Only one variation works. More on that later.
On the pull quotes. From same template and straight up straight forward.
Two steps:
Copy and paste CSS into CSS area of your Custom Design option. Save said.
Step two. I don’t know your posting process but I write in a separate editor and then cut and paste to the wordpress editor. And that editor has two parts…a visual editor and a text editor. Short codes only work if you enter them by way of the text editor. So write in or cut and paste your copy to the visual editor then switch to the text editor to enter the drop cap short-code and preview.
Here you go:
/* Dropcaps
————————————————————– */
.dropcap,.dropcap3,.dropcap4 {
text-align: center;
float: left;
color: #fff;
}
.dropcap {
background: url(‘images/shortcodes/sprites/custom_sprite_dddddd.png’) no-repeat -7px -343px;
margin: 0 10px -5px 0;
line-height: 42px;
font-size: 25px;
height: 44px;
width: 40px;
}
.dropcap4 {
background: url(‘images/shortcodes/button_overlay.png’) repeat-x 0 0 #111;
border: 1px solid #111;
line-height: 35px;
margin: 0 10px 0 0;
font-size: 17px;
height: 35px;
width: 35px;
}
.dropcap3 {
background: url(‘images/shortcodes/sprites/custom_sprite_dddddd.png’) no-repeat -6px -406px;
line-height: 35px;
margin-right: 5px;
font-size: 15px;
height: 40px;
width: 40px;
}
.dropcap2 {
display: block;
float: left;
font-size: 40px;
line-height: 40px;
margin: 0 8px -5px 0;
}
/* ——- 2. Pullquotes ——- */
.pullquote_right,.pullquote_left {
padding: 20px;
float: right;
font-size: 14px;
letter-spacing: 0;
line-height: 25px;
margin-bottom: 20px;
margin-left: 20px;
margin-right: 2px;
margin-top: 20px;
width: 33%;
}
.pullquote_left {
float: left;
margin-left: 2px;
margin-right: 20px;
}
—–that’s it
now the the short codes or HTML
Drop Class
R
————————————-
Pull Quote
First I had to find out about these godless, gun-toting, government-toppling, mountain-hiding gorillas in Cuba.
———————————–
Pick your drop cap letter and or your on quote and you should be good to go.
Here’s how it the code looks my page in the text editor my page:
I’ve been on and off-line since the days of DOS based Bulletin Boards. A long time.
Now the web is feeling a bit old sweater. Tug and comfortable, yet frayed beyond even Saturday wear. It’s lost it’s edge. Then again, so have I.
I’m a sixty year old guy living in a two baseball team town. A hillbilly by accident of birth, and an autodidact by circumstance, and, what the hell…choice– I’m interested in the rise of tribal narrative, and the fall of the individual’s appreciation for poetry, politics, and popular music.
I would liked to have lived in the day of the “EXTRA.” And “read all about” is just what I would have done. How sweet, the old film montage of spinning front pages and out-sized fonts, and all those scruffy dead-end kid hawkers. How cool to cop the ink-stained recent, throw a nickel on the counter for a cup of Joe, and peruse the latest symptoms of the human condition through the lazy smoke of a Lucky Strike.
Anyway, I– a sloppy writer, full of dots and dashes, and sans a grammatical bone in my hunt and peck fingers, rely repeatedly on Snz to cull and crisp, and stop my alliterations.
“I would liked to have lived in the day of the “EXTRA.” And “read all about” is just what I would have done.”
———————
Note the pullquote span class is on it’s own line. If you want to go pull left with the quote just replace left with right. But remember to keep all the underscores and code stuff in place.
Remember you must enter the short codes in the text editor and hit preview. You can play with the CSS to change font and this and that. Remember you’re only working with drop cap two. And I keep it simple, at least, to start.
Good luck… Hope this helps
Wow, after all that this comment editor would not display the raw html you need to work with the CSS. Strip it from both examples. There just a line each. Let me think about how to proceed.
I’m an idiot… this was how to handle this. Go here: http://1xpad.com/pull-quotes/
I did it!!! (See here: http://piedtype.com/pull-quotes/) Yay! Thanks for the encouragement!
I’m sure you have tried but you all you should have to do is replace “left” with right and “visa versa”…keeping all the code in the span. No “switch all the parameters”. The fact this works left speaks it should work right.
Remember to always work in the wordpress text editor and preview when making changes.
I test it this way. Copy this whole post in the text editor and dupe it to same page.
Now you should have two left pull quotes. Preview and see if you do.
If you do back to text editor and on the second or bottom quote just replace left with right. Preview and see what happens . Let me know.
Must have been changing that last comment as you were commenting. I double-checked everything and it all worked!