Building An Advanced WordPress Search With WP_Query

Many WordPress superpowers come from its flexible data architecture that allows developers to widely customize their installations with custom post types, taxonomies and fields. However, when it comes down to its search, WordPress provides us with only one-field form that often appears inadequate and leads site admins to adopt external search systems, like Google Custom Search, or third-party plugins.

In this article I’ll show you how to provide your WordPress installation with an advanced search system allowing the user to search and retrieve content from a specific custom post type, filtering results by custom taxonomy terms and multiple custom field values.

The post Building An Advanced WordPress Search With WP_Query appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Building An Advanced WordPress Search With WP_Query

Many WordPress superpowers come from its flexible data architecture that allows developers to widely customize their installations with custom post types, taxonomies and fields. However, when it comes down to its search, WordPress provides us with only one-field form that often appears inadequate and leads site admins to adopt external search systems, like Google Custom Search, or third-party plugins.

In this article I’ll show you how to provide your WordPress installation with an advanced search system allowing the user to search and retrieve content from a specific custom post type, filtering results by custom taxonomy terms and multiple custom field values.

The post Building An Advanced WordPress Search With WP_Query appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

9 essential rules for responsive image galleries

Responsive design is an essential and necessary part of web development. One of the biggest issues with responsive web design as of late has been images. Many debate the best way to display images on a responsive site. And then, what about image galleries?

Image galleries feature far more complexity than single images; there are even more variables and things to think about when implementing entire responsive image galleries on your website. Let’s take a look at some helpful tips for implementing responsive image galleries the right way.

1) Slideshows: hide nav whenever possible

You might not have navigation elements on a tablet or mobile device, but on a desktop, it is a good idea to hide those elements until they are needed. Items like forward and back arrows and navigational dots should be set to only display when someone mouses over the sliding image gallery. This avoids distractions, and you avoid conflicts between content and nav elements. The entire experience feels less jumbled.

2) Avoid too many portrait images

If you are implementing a gallery that is a grid of images, you’ll want to choose images that are landscape oriented, or square if possible. This makes it easier to view them on a small screen. Portrait images would be fine on a smart phone in portrait mode, but the wide viewing area of a landscape oriented phone makes it tough to view portrait images. Landscape is best, but you can settle for square if landscape isn’t an option. All images can be set to fit within a viewing area, but portrait images on a landscape screen will appear very small. Your images won’t be viewed as intently as square or landscape images, which will fill more area of the screen and appear larger. When selecting images, be sure to keep the person viewing them in mind.

3) Use gestures on tablets & mobile

People love to use gestures on their touch screens. They feel more empowered when it feels like they are sliding an image, because the experience is more immersive. Trying to tap tiny arrows or navigational dots on a mobile device is too tedious. It is much more natural to be able to take your finger and swipe an image up, down, left, or right.

4) Avoid lightboxes: disable them on mobile

If you have images of products, like machinery or items that should be viewed in more detail (fabric, jewels, etc.), then a lightbox with larger images makes sense. Even then, they should only be used on the desktop. When you break down to tablet and mobile screen sizes, lightboxes should be disabled. They can cause a number of user experience problems. If something happens and the lightbox doesn’t size correctly, then they may not be able to access the exit button, or images may not display properly.

5) When using nav elements, make them unobtrusive

If you have a sliding image gallery with a significant number of slides, then navigation makes sense. You don’t want to make users wait to cycle through everything. They can easily click through at their own speed, get in, get what they need, and get out. When using these elements, make sure to tuck them in places that are out of the way. Don’t have navigational dots going over text or other links. Also, avoid overly complex controls. These take up a lot of space, distract users from the content, and create a cluttered look. Having dots that users can click to cycle through or skip to certain images, and having forward and back arrows is plenty. Don’t overdo it!

6) Don’t mix images & videos

Mixing different media is usually okay, but mixing videos in where they aren’t expected can cause problems. You don’t want a user to accidentally initiate a video, which plays sound for all to hear. Separate videos and images, so they know what to expect. No one likes those types of surprises.

7) Make sure images don’t scale beyond their maximum width

This is important, because you can avoid pixelated scaling of images that are too small for a space. Images should be large enough to fill 100% of a mobile device (for most cases), but desktop sized sites should set only the maximum width to 100%. I’ve seen some cases where someone has one of those large 27” displays, and when they drag out the browser width, the image scales with it, past its intended size.

8) Image scaling

If you have images scale, make sure they scale down, not up. It’s best to set exact dimensions for your images. Many times, a percentage is used for one dimension, while the other dimension is set to auto. For example, if you want an image to span 50% of the width of the browser, you’d set the image’s width to 50% and the height to auto.

9) Avoid using image captions

Image captions or any other accompanying text can cause all sorts of problems for you and your users. The first problem is that it is tough to fit the text on a mobile device. With smartphones, you have limited space as it is, but trying to add text can make the entire experience feel cluttered and crammed together. Another issue is that you are limited in the amount of text you can use. Adding a caption, or any extra text, adds the variable of responsive text into the mix. You have to consider word breaks, and how multiple lines of text will end up looking along with your image. If the text is used as an overlay, you also have to concern yourself with where it falls over the image. Light text over light area of the image will make the text unreadable. Contrast is key, and every image is different.

Conclusion

The bottom line when it comes down to any aspect of web design is that it has to work well, and have the user in mind. If no one can use your website, they won’t come back. Following these simple dos and don’ts of responsive image galleries will make it so that users won’t run into common problems when viewing your images.

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Sebastian Wrong launches "competitive" new lighting brand called Wrong London

Business news: British designer Sebastian Wrong is launching a new lighting company with offices in London and Hong Kong. (more…)

With Obama Set To Announce Nominee, Speculation About Whom It'll Be

President Obama on Wednesday will announce his nominee for the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Antonin Scalia's death. Sri Srinivasan is among the top contenders; he's Asian-American and Hindu.

Franciscan Leaders Charged With Protecting Friar They Knew Had Molested Children

Three retired leaders of the Franciscan religious order have been charged with with conspiracy and child endangerment for allowing a friar who was a known sexual predator to work in schools.

Google’s AI Wins Fifth And Final Game Against Go Genius Lee Sedol

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — In the final game of their historic match, Google’s artificially intelligent Go-playing computer system has defeated Korean grandmaster Lee Sedol, finishing the best-of-five series with four wins and one loss. The win puts an exclamation mark on a significant moment for artificial intelligence. Over the last twenty-five years, machines have beaten […] The post Google's AI Wins Fifth And Final Game Against Go Genius Lee Sedol appeared first on WIRED.

Hitman Is a Thrilling Return, But You Can’t Play It All at Once

The first episode of Square Enix's new Hitman features three thrilling assassination missions that can get creepy, funny, and only sometimes broken. The post Hitman Is a Thrilling Return, But You Can't Play It All at Once appeared first on WIRED.

Raw concrete and black-painted metal give industrial appearance to house by Tectum

Tectum used a combination of gridded and board-marked concrete for this residence, which is set in a gated community in the foothills of Argentina's Sierras Chicas mountains (+ slideshow). (more…)

Fashion Retail Slump: Are Brands Out Of Touch?

A couple of major retail brands have posted some grim numbers. Rachel Martin talks with Washington Post reporter Sarah Halzack about why it's so hard to make mid-priced clothes people will buy.

A Year Without jQuery

Patrick Kunka writes about his experiments in making a large-scale web app without jQuery:

In my mind, ES6 is for the most part a much-needed syntactical progression of the JavaScript language and jQuery is for the most part, a DOM manipulation library with a beautifully designed API. These two things actually have very little in common so I wanted to write this article primarily to prove that you can stop using jQuery today - and you don’t need ES6 or Babel to do it.

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A Year Without jQuery is a post from CSS-Tricks

ArtsBeat: Morgan Library to Offer a Weekend With Free Admission

The Morgan Library & Museum is going to offer free admission on the weekend of April 15-17.

The best new portfolio sites, March 2016

Welcome, readers, back to our monthly portfolio roundup. Have a look at the site’s we’ve featured, get inspired for the month, and start sketching!

If you’ve recently built yourself a great-looking portfolio site, tell us about it at ezequiel@webdesignerdepot.com

Note: I’m judging these sites by how good they look to me. If they’re creative and original, or classic but really well-done, it’s all good to me. Sometimes, UX suffers, for example many of these sites depend on JavaScript to display their content at all; this is a Bad Idea^TM, kids.

UI Viking

UI Viking is a fantastic example of taking what might look like a plain, boring design, and giving it a distinctive style.

Now, I’ll admit that the button that says “HIRE ME, or I’ll find you and send you to Valhalla.” gave me pause. I’m normally not one to begin the designer-client relationship with a death threat, joking or otherwise.

The UI Viking makes it hilarious, though, by keeping all of the copy on the site consistently over-the-top. I was amused. And yeah, I’d hire him.

Vincent Guillevic

Vincent Guillevic’s portfolio, aims for less violent imagery, favoring of simplicity and sophistication. Once you click through to a project, the minimalism gives way to a wealth of information about the creative process behind every project.

Fabio Muniz

Fabio Muniz’s portfolio drops the imagery altogether, on the home page. A text-only home page is always a risk, but it doesn’t hurt that the typography is beautiful.

In keeping with the theme, there’s almost more text than imagery in the case studies. For anyone who loves a good story about design, this portfolio is a good one to check out.

Alex Camp

Alex Camp’s portfolio is simple, pretty, and no-nonsense. It even (oh thank whichever-deity-you-like) works perfectly with JavaScript disabled. The lack of contrast on some of the text may come back to bite him, but overall, this is a great little portfolio site.

Studio Koto

Studio Koto has embraced the carousel as a way to showcase all of their work on one big single-page portfolio. It’s weird for me to say that a portfolio based on slideshows actually kind of works. But here I am, saying it.

Rauzi Design

Rauzi Design has fully adopted the “single-page-app” metaphor for building their portfolio; and it’s interesting to see that in action. Aesthetically, it looks great.

I am concerned that it’s not possible to share links to specific pages or projects. That could negatively impact them when people try to share something on the site with someone else.

David Bastian

I couldn’t help myself on this one. I’ve always loved side-scrolling portfolio sites, and this one looks fantastic, even elegant. Using this site, it feels sophisticated, and smooth.

Gonna have to take issue with the navigation on the desktop version of the site, though. You should be able to just scroll right without dragging on a red dot.

Camille Magnan

Camille Magnan’s site is another of those that takes an average layout and makes it shine with a distinct style. You’re unlikely to confuse her site with anyone else’s; and in this case, that’s a very good thing.

Jeffrey Peltzman

Jeffrey Peltzman’s portfolio is dark, relaxing, and kinda purple. Actually, it’s a testament to his use of this accent color that the whole site “feels purple” while there’s barely any on the page.

Browse through his portfolio, and you’ll see how he does that with other colors too.

Heather Weaver

The thing I like most about Heather Weaver’s portfolio is that it is clearly targeted at her customers. If you look through her work, they’re all corporate-style clients. Her work is made up of corporate-style websites (you know the design flavor I’m talking about). The final touch is that her portfolio looks like it was made by someone who does corporate-style design.

There’s not a hint of the all-too-common “I’m actually an artist but I also do corporate work” attitude; she knows what her strengths are, and she plays to them.

Patrik Huebner

Patrik Huebner’s portfolio is simple, elegant, and typographically strong. He doesn’t need anything more complex, because his algorithm-based animation does the rest of the sales work for him.

I love his use of contrast, too.

Aaron Porter

Aaron Porter is both a designer and a filmmaker. His site represents this with a minimalist design that uses a combination of animation and video footage to eye-popping effect.

It’s probably a little bandwidth-heavy. However, if you need his services, you most likely have that bandwidth to spare.

True

The people at True have achieved something remarkable. You know a designer is good when you’re not even sure what language the site is in, but it’s still fun, and easy, to browse.

My only complaint is that they hid the language switcher until you hit the hamburger button. Those things should be front and (maybe) center.

Villa

Welcome to another installment of “The Layout is Nothing Special, but that Style is Beautiful” featuring Villa! Gotta love any designer who can keep your attention with nothing more than an eye for color and good type.

Kodo Nishimura

Kodo Nisghimura is a makeup artist, so his portfolio is naturally designed for the world of high fashion. Elegant typography, beautiful, professionally shot imagery, along with a light dose of UI animation make up this site.

Pleid

Here’s a secret. You have a better chance of getting on this list if you can use the color yellow well. Yellow is tough.

At Pleid, it’s a destaurated, light yellow that provides the backdrop for their work. This otherwise normal portfolio site is made remarkable by actually pulling off the color scheme they use.

Akeo

The Akeo agency has brought back the sticky sidebar/header. Sort of. They mix minimalism with chaotic, half-grungy imagery to spice up what would otherwise be a serviceable, but rather plain portfolio.

Karina Twiss

While I am forced to admit that the navigation on Karina Twiss’ portfolio is entirely unintuitive, the site is pretty. Instead of giving you thumbnails of her photography, the site starts off by throwing you headfirst into individual photos.

The first thing you see is the beautiful details in her work. Then, if you want, you can zoom out and see the rest. It’s a novel approach, to be sure.

Meri

Meri, an agency, has adopted the split-screen style, combined with classic minimalism, and a modern aesthetic. Half website and half presentation, the site actually offers multiple ways to browse through their work. Click around and find out how they did it.

Elespacio

Elespacio’s agency site is vibrant, combining a minimalist design, bright colors, and big typography in a way that is both familiar, and unique to them. Every project page has its own art direction behind it, so the site is just plain fun to browse.

Myf Web Designer

Myf Web Designer uses the now-familiar polygonal style to great effect, alongside elegant typography. The subtle animation effect on the first part of this one-page portfolio is a nice touch.

Flavien Guilbaud

Flavien Guilbaud’s site starts off with a simple, asymmetrical layout showing his work. Hovering over the thumbnail reveals the project’s name in big, center-screen type that you just can’t miss.

Benjamin Walton

Benjamin Walton’s portfolio wastes no time showing off his work, starting with a masonry-style layout and little else.

Alessandro Giammaria

Alessandro Giammaria is an Italian designer with an impeccable sense of style. He showcases that sense of style in a minimalist design that starts out monochromatic, and gets progressively more colorful as you browse through his work.

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