![\"\"](\"http:\/\/bearealis.com\/games\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/SuffusionSidebars.jpg\" "\\"SuffusionSidebars\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nI wanted my theme to be completely flexible, adjustable, and simple. \u00a0I tried many themes before I landed with\u00a0Suffusion<\/a><\/em>, the theme you now see. \u00a0First I had tried Graphene<\/em>. \u00a0This theme was okay as far as flexibility went, but it had some compatibility issues with some of my plugins. \u00a0Then I tried BlogoLife<\/em>, which, while also pretty flexible, wasn’t friendly with fonts. \u00a0I tried various others, but they were all terribly uncustomizeable. \u00a0While Suffusion<\/em> does lack a few features such as stretching a background image, it has the greatest bang-for-buck that I could find, and I am quite happy with it. \u00a0It allows a tremendous amount of control for all aspects of the site, yet remains easy to use and understand. \u00a0It comes with multiple color-skins, tabbed-sidebars, featured-posts, and is compatible with everything I’ve thrown at it.<\/p>\n I styled my site after the blues and reds of the Aurora Borealis, which is the namesake for… \u00a0my dog, which is the namesake for my company. \ud83d\ude00 \u00a0I drew the site’s artwork to playfully mesmerize (but not too much), which is something I try to work into my better games as well.<\/p>\n But artwork and themes would be nothing without content and functionality, which is where plugins come in.<\/p>\n I wanted a plugin for storing media items on my site in an easily-accessible catalog format. Specifically, I wanted to catalog my computer game creations and display that catalog to the public. Besides needing to add, update, or remove items at any time without worrying about formatting or ordering, I needed each item’s image and description to link to the separate file where the game was stored, which meant that the average photo-sorting plugin would not work. I also wanted to be able to limit which items would be displayed on certain pages, so that different kinds of games could be categorized.<\/p>\n I found this plugin called Catablog<\/em>. It had a 5-star rating and had been downloaded a lot. Catablog<\/em> turned out to be just what I was looking for. (you can download it here<\/a>) I’ll use this very plugin to show you some of its features:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n yet for all the speed and simplicity, it contains an impressive amount of flexibility. It allows multiple pictures per item, and can optionally display them as overlays through a LightBox javascript (click the image).<\/p>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t\r\n<\/div> Click this title to go to Catablog's support site, where help and details can be found!<\/p>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t\r\n<\/div> Simply paste the Catablog shortcode anywhere in any page you want, and the catalog will appear! Adding a few words to the shortcode will control what categories will be displayed. (This presentation segment is all contained in one category. You can see other categories I use by visiting other pages of this site.)<\/p>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t\r\n<\/div> The optional presence of this feature is what really \"sold\" me on this impressive plugin. I'm not using these feature currently, but it's nice to have on hand.<\/p>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t\r\n<\/div> Catablog doesn't give much room for customization in regards to physical spacing or columns (unless you add a template, which requires some coding knowledge), nor does it well-accommodate sorts or multi-page displays, but it has the features I desired, so I'm happy. <\/p>\n I’d always wanted a full-featured forum in my site, such as would allow me to keep up with feedback as well as communicate with friends and\u00a0acquaintances.\u00a0After doing a bit of digging, the Mingle Forum<\/em> plugin<\/a> seemed like the best choice for me.<\/p>\n Mingle Forum<\/em> was designed to be simple, lightweight, and effective. \u00a0Its name comes from the fact that it is built to work with the Mingle<\/em> social-networking plugin, but it works just as well without, which is how I use it. \u00a0This plugin basically has all the functionality of any average forum you may find on any site. \u00a0Among its features are search-bars, user account options, custom skins, sticky-posts\/topics, Captcha codes, and user groups.<\/p>\n The forum itself is incredibly easy to set up. \u00a0Simply paste its smartcode snippet in a page, set up a few categories, and you’re done! \u00a0Take a look at the forum<\/a> I’ve established on this site to see the various levels and features that come standard with this\u00a0phenomenal\u00a0tool!<\/p>\n While these two are the main plugins I’ve implemented, there are a few others of note that I’ve added to my site:<\/p>\n – Used for the “Contact” page<\/p>\n – Used for scheduled backups of the website<\/p>\n – Allows users to create or use avatars local to this site or from Twitter, instead of only gravatars, which not everyone knows how to use<\/p>\n – Enables the HTML5 tags <header>, <footer>, <aside>, <canvas>, <video>, <audio>, <source>, and others in your post editor; useful for my html5 game projects<\/p>\n – Allows easy implementation of the Google Fonts library<\/p>\n – Creates the poll widget on my home page<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Well, there you have it. \u00a0These are the tools I have learned, and upon which I have built my website. \u00a0The primary piece of my site is the Catablog<\/em> plugin, since that is where my primary content is stored. \u00a0Then there is the Mingle Forum<\/em> plugin which gives my site a level of interactivity, great both for attracting return\u00a0visitors and for facilitating feedback. \u00a0Finally, the Suffusion<\/em> theme allows my site to both look great and operate properly, both very important. \u00a0These three features form the foundation for my website, and I can’t imagine trying to implement them without WordPress.<\/p>\n I hope you try these and other features in your own future projects! My Site I make computer games, both for a hobby, and tentatively for commercial use as well. \u00a0Up until now, I haven’t had a proper means of publicly displaying my projects. \u00a0I had a small webpage with a few links in it, but it was terribly tedious to manually maintain everything in it, and the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"no-sidebars.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-44","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bearealis.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bearealis.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bearealis.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bearealis.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bearealis.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/bearealis.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200,"href":"https:\/\/bearealis.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/44\/revisions\/200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bearealis.com\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Catablog Plugin<\/strong><\/h1>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t\r\n\tThis plugin allows new items to be added, edited, or removed even more quickly than a post!<\/h3>\r\n\t\r\n\t
<\/a>\r\n\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t\r\n\tIt allows multiple pictures per item, and can use pictures and titles to link to the files of your choice.<\/a><\/h3>\r\n\t\r\n\t
<\/a>\r\n\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t\r\n\tYou can control the order of items in Catablog, as well as filter which items get shown on certain pages.<\/h3>\r\n\t\r\n\t
<\/a>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t\r\n\tFinally, Catablog offers the ability to sell any items using your Paypal account whenever you decide that that one special item is worth selling.<\/h3>\r\n\t\r\n\t
<\/a>\r\n\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t\r\n\tThere are, of course, many other things Catablog can do, in addition to many things it cannot do.<\/h3>\r\n\t\r\n\t
\r\nTry Catablog for yourself and see how easy it is!<\/p>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t\r\n<\/div><\/div>\u00a0Mingle Forum Plugin<\/h1>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nOther Plugins<\/h1>\n
Contact Form 7<\/h6>\n
BackWPup<\/h6>\n
Avatars<\/h6>\n
html5ify for WP<\/h6>\n
WP Google Fonts<\/h6>\n
WP-Polls<\/h6>\n
<\/h1>\n
Summary<\/h1>\n
\nThanks for reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"