O.L. Design

Lots of people have been mailing me, asking about how certain features of this site works, and how they can do similar things on their sites. I decided to put together a small FAQ containing the most common questions here. So check here before you email! That would save some time for all of us I think.

I’m starting it off pretty small, so if you have questions related to this site and how it works, that are not covered on this page, you can ask them here as a comment to this entry. By doing it that way, we’ll hopefully end up with a more complete FAQ. So, here goes.

What is that cool effect when viewing images in your portfolio?

That effect is achieved using a Javascript library called Lightbox JS, which is free and very easy to use. You can obtain it here.

How does the live preview when writing comments work?

This site uses a WordPress plug-in called Live Comment Preview which enables this. It mainly uses Javascript to extract whatever is written in the comment form, and put it inside a div, and updates it whenever the user strikes a key on the keyboard. You can download the plug-in here. This article by Jon Hicks, though a bit outdated by now, explains how live comment previewing works in more detail.

What WordPress plug-ins do you use?

Apart from Live Comment Preview (see previous question), I use Super Archive by Jonas Rabbe for the live journal archive, and Contact Form II for — you guessed it — the mail form on the contact page.