Make use of the Featured Section.

This little post is probably more directed towards the writers of Yukan, but feel free to just enjoy the images even if the content is irrelevant to you ^^. As you guys have probably noticed, the layout has a featured section. The featured area is right of the headline section and just below the banner. Its a way of highlighting posts and hence serves several purposes. One of which is to give more attention to a certain post and the other is to give readers an easy way to access posts that may be especially worth viewing.

(SOUL RESONANCE!!! MakaMiku?)

I’ve realized that besides blissmo, no other writer has featured any of their posts yet. I’m not sure if this is because they were just not given instructions on how to do so or is there some other reason. Of course we don’t want every post featured as it would just render the featured section’s ability to highlight posts useless. So I guess this post is just a few guidelines on which posts you may wish to feature and how to do so.

(mmm… takoyaki, I also like ramune, raman and lots of other Japanese beverages… UMAIBO!!)

There are certain posts that should not be featured. Posts like episodic reviews shouldn’t be featured because these posts make up a large portion of the main content that can be found on Yukan. We want to highlight interesting, unique and posts that are different from what we usually post. However there are exceptions, such as if you feel a certain episode is so freaken epic lol, or other epicness alike. If your just not sure if you should feature a post or not just ask blissmo or me and we will sort it out. Examples of posts that defiantly should be featured are things such as batch reviews/previews. Remember these are not really rules they are just guidelines, there is allot of freedom and in most cases you can feature your content whenever you like. Just make sure others gets an equal chance.

(Still remember this image? ^^)

There is one more thing to consider when featuring something. The featured section allows for four featured posts at a time, I don’t want to see them being bumped off every minute. The oldest feature should be given at least a week on the featured board before being bumped off.

(Just a random image this time lol)

Now onto the instructions of how to feature your post.

First thing is to write up your post as you do normally, if you don’t know how to do that blissmo is gonna slap you.

(I really wanted to find a cool pic of Black Star, aw well at least he left his mark in this one)

Save your post if you believe it will explode or something, then scroll down and you should see the Custom Fields area listed under Advanced Options. Expand the tab if it isn’t already and you should see something like this:

There are two areas that need to be filled in. You have a choice of selecting “Image” in the drop down menu or simply manually typing “Image” under key. The other space that needs to be filled in is the box under Value. This is where the url of your featured image should be placed. Simply put the url eg. http://www.website.com/image.jpg

(Just look at the colours @_@;)

Now for the last step. You must select Featured as the category for your post. You may select multiple categories so it wont affect your original category choice. To do so simply look under the Categories tab, scroll down and find Featured and tick the box. Make sure the Image is 115px × 80px to avoid distortion, you may crop/re-size your image in any program you wish, if you don’t have image editing program or just simply don’t know how I’m sure some magic imp will do it for you.

(Not sure if you’ve noticed but I’m a big fan of Hatsune Miku XD)

I’m sure some of you are wondering “what about the headline section.” It works in much the same way however we don’t want any writers headlining their posts just yet. This is because unlike the featured posts, Headline posts do not appear in the main body of the website. It’s made that way to avoid creating a double post appearance. (If you don’t understand what I meant by that I’m not gonna bother to explain it -.-) As there is only one Headline that can appear at a time, this means once a headline is posted it will bump the previous one off the page. I think its best to leave the Headline for joint posts to make it fair. I haven’t discussed it with blissmo yet but we will sort it out sooner or later. Most likely the Headline will be used to display posts that are site related, posts that are written by multiple writers and posts that are so freaken epic just looking at it makes your head explode lol.

The new layouts finally up and running… kinda, still needs a few adjustments read more for details ^^

Well it took a little time than expected ^^; but the new layout has been activated and seems to be working nicely… I hope. The original theme is called Arthemia by Michael Jubel, have a look at the original its not that much different, for now lol. Blissmo pointed out this magazine theme quite some time ago and at first glance I really liked it. It has a nice clean look and feel, which is quite different to the old Yukan theme which had a much darker colour theme. As with many other layouts its never as simple as just activating and watching everything work nicely. If you don’t know, a hobby of mine is working with computer graphics, I enjoy creating and editing images, I enjoy customizing and creating layouts and its great watching them actually work lol. However unfortunately I’m quite horrible when it comes to coding. We’ll the rest of this post probably wont interest most of you so I put in a few cool pics for you guys to look at while I rant about the technicalities of the new layout.

(Yay Shana ^^ btw I really like the second OP Joint)

Moving along, I removed the duel column sidebar that existed in the original and left Arthemia with a single column side bar we’ve all grown used to. I also got rid of the rounded top and made it kinda like the old Yukan theme, with the navigation bar stuck to the top of the browser and the rotating banner (which is working properly in firefox and ie now) beneath it.

Now onto my complaints… Firstly the layout width, you probably haven’t noticed (namely because you haven’t seen the original theme) Yukan’s width requirements were too large for the original Arthemia theme. Actually now that I think about it increasing the with of the overall layout wasn’t that tedious. Well the next thing really pissed me off, I wonder if anyone is bothering to read this far, I’ll start another paragraph in an attempt to catch more attention and of course use it as a chance to insert cool looking images.

(*Inserts cool meaningless image along with text in Italics for added coolness)

Apparently the writers of Yukan were meant to follow some guidelines so that the posts looked nice and neat. Working with the new layout made me realized this isn’t so…shame on you T_T. Well Blissmo is partly to blame, I find the easiest method when adding images to a post is to have no coding placed along with the images. This is especially important when it comes to inserting those six images. The spacing in between the images need to be even, when somethings not even it really shits me. I’m kinda like that Death the Kid guy from Soul Eater when it comes to layouts lol and other things. So ye it really shits me…

(This text is only for visual appeal, blah blah now its long enough)

Anyway like I was saying its best to have no “custom code/styling” as the css within the theme will magically do it for you. Hmm maybe an example will be easier to understand. Ryuk the shinigami tells you to sacrifice one apple to him a day. He really likes apples and if he sees one he has to eat it, but he’s on a diet and if he eats too many apples he will go on a freaken rampage. On one fine day someone decides to comes along and sacrifice another apple to Ryuk. ZOMGWTFBBQ! How many apples do we have? TWO! Thats right TWO F^#@ING APPLES, and how many does Ryuk want… ONE! thats right one… and now your all dead. If your still confused then let me reiterate, Mr CSS Style Sheet puts an restraining order of 5 pixles away from everything on Mr Image(1), However some one comes along and tells Mr Image(1) to stay another 5 pixles away from Mr Image(2). Oh no what has happened? Mr Image(1) is now 10 pixles away from Mr Image(2), and is now currently HUMPING THE SIDEBAR. Mr layout becomes completely F’ed up and fixing it is just too complicated. Ok, thats my complaints, hopefully new guidelines will make things more simpler and less painful, remember guys one apple is enough, and we don’t want Images humping the sidebar.

(If you haven’t heard Melt by Hatsune Miku, go visit Nico Nico now!, in a new tab of course)

I hope you enjoyed the images, I’ll be sure to bring you more the next time I post. New guidelines will be made to resolve apple amount issues and Images humping anything will be dealt with shortly. Allot of adjustments will need to be made so that Death the Kid doesn’t die from spasms. We also need new banners but I think Blissmo mentioned something. Anyway, I’ve spent way too long typing all this, I sure hope some one reads it T_T.

I’ve joined the Yukan Blog!

I’ve joined the Yukan Blogging Team. I guess I’ll just write a small intro first. If you can remember seeing my site thats great but if you haven’t here it is. I started writing at the end of 2006 so its been around one and a half years now. I mainly reviewed anime and Japanese live-action dramas, however every know and then I’d also pop in a wallpaper or two. I’ve seen quite a number of anime in the past few years and have recently started to get into live-action dramas. After 29 live-action and 77 anime reviews I’ve decided to take a different approach to blogging. I’d like to thank Maestro and the AnimeBlogger team for their services, without their assistance I would not have been given the opportunity to run a website. My old blog however will stay up for development purposes. Finally I’d like to thank the Yukan Team for letting me join them, I’m sure we will enjoy writing and sharing our interests in the future.

As for what I will be writing about, it will mainly consist of non-episodic anime and live-action reviews. I’ve mentioned that one of my hobbies is creating computer graphics, so I’ll use this opportunity in being apart of the Yukan Blog to display shiny *_* and attractive banners that you are probably all used to seeing here already. Also I’ll try to not bore everyone and throw in something random every now and then (See Above lol)