This mostly for personal reference, but you may find it useful too if you use WordPress.
Formatting
- Use horizontal rules to separate sections that don’t have separate titles. Horizontal rules should always be full-width. (I break that second rule a lot. I don’t know what compels me to choose differently, but I almost always agree with my decision to disregard it, so there is some reason for it.)
- All headings should be level 3-6 (levels 1-2 are reserved for post titles).
- Avoid using horizontal rules before headings – the heading is doing the separation already!
- NEVER use “smart” or “fancy” quotes. They break so easily and cause minor issues sometimes. (Any post that already has them, unless broken, doesn’t need this “fixed”.)
- (Use parenthesis instead of hover text.) Hover text is added as
<span title="Text shown when hovered.">normal text</span>
. This should be avoided, as it is probably not friendly to other forms of representing text, and relies on a customization applied to the CSS of this blog. It also doesn’t appear as different text in the editor, making it hard to notice, make changes to, or check for mistakes. - Avoid using the quote type text block. They don’t work very well. (That said, they occassionally work well enough to use anyhow.)
- Something in WordPress likes to make text with a hashtag in front of it automatically turn into a link to posts with that tag. Suppress this by including an empty span:
#<span></span>not-a-tag
. - Posts containing latex need to have as a block at the top of the post.
This is the CSS that makes the hover text work (it should not be used for compatibility/accessibility reasons):
/* indicates hover text */
em[title],span[title] {
border-bottom: dashed 0.1em;
}
Linking
- Local links should start with a
/
instead of using the domain name. - Acceptable headings for links? “Sources and Further Reading”, “Sources”, “References”, “Sources, References, Footnotes”, “Footnotes”, “Footnotes & Sources”
- If I decide to remove a post, paste its content into a Pastebin and link to that from its original posting rather than outright removing it. This must be a nofollow link.
- When linking to any form of media, it should also be embedded if possible. Similarly, if media is embedded, unless its source is me, it needs to be linked to also.
- When linking to sources who should not receive more attention than minimally necessary, add nofollow to those links only.
Metadata
- Extra notes about the origin of a post near the top? Italicize. (I think I only ever did this with very old posts.)
- Drabble posts should explain what a drabble is.
- Photos should have captions (not metadata captions, but on-the-post captions).
- Any critical updates to a post must include an extra line at the top about the update. For very important posts, when updates are made, a log at the bottom should show what was changed and when.
- Spend at least a minute figuring out if the auto-generated post URL is good. Shorten it or change it as desired. (And, importantly, never change it after publication – no matter how much I want to get rid of “
/what-is-a-raid-post
“.) - I need to include a note about categorizing things in their parent categories.
- Also need to add exerpts manually because the generated ones are shit.
Importing
- WordPress doesn’t handle pasting formatted text correctly in almost every case I’ve encountered.
- WordPress also doesn’t hamdle pasting raw text without formatting (Ctrl+Shift+V) in many cases. Always double-check any pasted text, because it will usually be wrong and require manual repair.
Custom CSS In-Use
I may fail to update this in the future (sorry!) but it is current as of 2024-10-31.
code {
color: #cde !important;
background: #333;
}
h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
padding: 0;
}
ul,ol {
margin-left: 1em;
}
/* default theme doesn't make image captions very readable */
figcaption.wp-element-caption {
color: #888 !important;
}
/* indicates hover text */
em[title],span[title] {
border-bottom: dashed 0.1em;
}
/* hiding WordPress footer*/
footer>div>div.site-info {
display: none;
}
Multi-Line Latex Equation
It took me a while to figure out how to do this on Fastest Space Travel, Smallest Time Dilation, so I want it easily referenced. (This relies on the “WP QuickLaTeX” plugin.)