Serendipity v1.1 and Dynamic Templates

As a regular user of the web, I have never really been satisfied with very many websites. While many sites might look nice, and some sites seem to do an excellent job simplifying usability, I’ve felt that most websites rely exclusively on color and style to control site branding, while relying solely on text to convey information. (I will point to my site as a um, “good” example of this combination.)

I tried to address part of this problem a while ago by creating a plugin for s9y that used the css hook to alter the color scheme based on the age of the last post. It worked pretty well, but it was not especially great at understanding things like containers and all the things that make a really good theme.

Recently, Garvin added the ability to place code (and user variables) in the Serendipity template setup. This feature is available in the 1.1 release of Serendipity, which Garvin released yesterday. It has some great new features, including the mysql query improvement I talked about earlier.

And so I decided to sit down and figure out a template that would tell you something else about the world when you looked at it, without having to use bold text or spell it out for the user.

The “Time of Day” template is the result, mostly because I didn’t want to ruin any of my better ideas by trying to implement them myself. You can see it in action at http://beta.theledge.net. More information about the template can be found at http://beta.theledge.net/pages/about_this_template.html, but the simple explanation is that this template changes its color scheme based on the time of day of the server, darkening as it approaches night time and then lightening again at the sunrise.

I mentioned this idea to Carl Galloway and ran a few other ideas passed him. He and Ceejay jumped at the chance to do a weather based template. Their Weather Template uses some code I put together (with help from the s9y weather sidebar plugin) to pull METAR weather data and change the appearance of the template based on the current weather conditions for a specific location. It is extremely detailed, and incredible neat to play with.

But those are only the tip of the iceberg. I have code to change a template based on the number of hits the application receives in a 5 second period (in fact, the data collection period is configurable, as are the thresholds to change the page).

I also have code that will change a template based on the age of the last post. I can easily alter this so that the page changes based on the age of the last comment, and I would love to have a reason to flesh it out so that it can be configured for either (or so that it reports both and a template alters its appearance based on either).

Obviously code would not be difficult to link the website to a user’s online status (for most instant messengers). XML and RSS could possibly take the whole idea to incredible new levels. Stock prices are now a relatively simple thing to access on most of the exchanges, and could be used without too much difficulty.

I honestly think the internet is wired up enough that websites could start offering their users information in an intuitive way without any difficulty whatsoever. It just takes web designers who recognize ways to show data in compelling new ways.

I’m just not a web designer, and I could not do these ideas justice. But I could code them up relatively easily.

So if anyone would like to work with me on new, better looking dynamic templates please let me know!

Meanwhile, the Time of Day template and the Weather template should be available from Serendipity’s Spartacus sometime soon. If you would like to work on one of my ideas before then, please feel free to contact me.