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How best to go dark for SOPA protest?

  1. windwhistle
    Member

    I'm planning to go dark on Jan. 18 in support of the SOPA protest and Reddit's blackout. But the best I can think of to do is make my site "private" for the day. Any of you CSS experts out there got any ideas of how to do it better? I've got the CSS upgrade. I could stick in a bit of special code for the day. Maybe something to just display a totally black page/screen? Or better, a totally black page/screen with "Stop SOPA" in giant white letters. I'd love to do something like this, even if only 4 loyal readers see it.

    (Of course, it would be so much better if WordPress as a whole would go dark ... hint, hint ... )

    The blog I need help with is piedtype.com.

  2. plamere
    Member

    +1

    A SOPA black-on-black theme would be nice.

  3. windwhistle
    Member

    If only they could crank out a theme that fast. Then everyone could use it, not just those with CSS upgrade.

  4. thesacredpath
    Member

    @windwhistle, they can. We need to suggest it though. I would most definitely go dark for that.

  5. thesacredpath
    Member

    I've yelled in the backdoor at staff and will post back here when I hear back from them.

  6. windwhistle
    Member

    Cool! They know you and might listen.

  7. thesacredpath
    Member

    They are supporting opposition to it, so they just might do this. We'll have to wait and see.

  8. windwhistle
    Member

    If they REALLY support it, all of WordPress would go dark. But I understand the financial repercussions of doing so.

    Maybe instead of a whole new theme (which would be very difficult for a lot of people to switch to for one day and then switch back), they could come up with some universal gimmick like the snow, that people could turn on or off without wrecking their existing site. A giant diagonal black banner across the screen or something like that.

  9. laurasbadideas
    Member

    It would be even nicer if there were a mechanism to schedule this in advance, rather than having to change themes manually at 8am/8pm EST.

  10. windwhistle
    Member

    They scheduled the snow to go on and off. They could schedule black banners or overlays to do the same thing. Barring that, I'll probably be doing whatever I do late the night before.

  11. auxclass
    Member

    Taking down 30,000,000++ blogs including CNN and many large company sites and news sites that support your position could be a bit problematic if they did not have everyone's permission -

  12. neilfein
    Member

    Anyone get any word on this? I'd also like to join the SOPA blackout if there's a technical way to do it.

  13. justjennifer
    Member

    I don't know about overall layover, etc., (and I shudder to think about the user protest over doing something so broad), but here's what I'm planning to do on January 18th: change my Reading settings to one post per page and put up a banner, like the one available on Lorelle's site, http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/january-18-join-reddit-in-a-national-blackout-day-of-protest-against-sopa/

    If you don't have the Custom Design upgrade, but your theme has a custom background, then simply make it black for that day.

  14. justjennifer
    Member

    And of course tag your post with SOPA http://en.wordpress.com/tag/sopa/

  15. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    We don't have anything specific planned for SOPA Day yet, but if we do something site-wide, it will be non-disruptive, or rather no more disruptive than the snow was.

    If you want to do something yourself, you can add the following as an untitled Text widget:

    <a target='_blank' class='stop-sopa-ribbon' href='http://americancensorship.org/'><img src='[image URL]' alt='Stop SOPA' style='position:fixed;top:0;right:0;z-index:100000;cursor:pointer;' /></a>

    The ribbon for use with this can be downloaded from http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/stop-sopa-ribbon/trunk/stop-sopa-ribbon.png and uploaded to your own blog via Media -> Add New in your Dashboard. Editing the newly uploaded image in the Media section will show you the image's URL to enter in the code above.

    As you can guess, this is more or less the http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stop-sopa-ribbon/ plugin. Plugins can't be used on WordPress.com, but this one seems to function just fine in a Text widget.

  16. teamoyeniyi
    Member

    For the non-Americans on WordPress, would someone like to give us a 2 paragraph rundown on SOPA

  17. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    How about a 4 minute video instead? :)

    http://vimeo.com/31100268

  18. justjennifer
    Member

    And maybe a little bit longer than 2 paragraphs, Jane's post on WordPress.org is a must read. http://wordpress.org/news/2012/01/help-stop-sopa-pipa/

  19. justjennifer
    Member

    @macmanx Cool! Thanks for the text widget idea!

  20. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    And in super-condensed infographic form: http://americancensorship.org/infographic.html

    It's good if you need a quick read, but the video is much better.

    @justjennifer you're welcome!

  21. panaghiotisadam
    Member

    @windwhistle: If you want "a totally black screen with "Stop SOPA" in giant white letters", go to Appearance > Background, set the bg color to #000, then go to Appearance > Widget, add a Text widget to the primary sidebar, and paste this in it:
    <div align="center" style="position:fixed;width:100%;height:100%;top:0;right:0;background-color:#000;text-align:center;font-size:800%;font-weight:bold;padding-top:300px;"><a style="color:#fff;" href="URL" target="_blank">Stop SOPA</a></div>
    (I've turned "Stop SOPA" into a link: replace URL with the actual URL of a page that explains what this is about.)

  22. windwhistle
    Member

    Thanks, Panos, I'll try that out. I played around a lot last night, using trial and error with what you taught me about position:absolute, and came up with a huge 80% black rectangle that covers my whole blog and includes a message. Changed the background to black and got just about what I wanted, though I'm still fine tuning. (See my test blog at http://windwhistle.wordpress.com)

  23. panaghiotisadam
    Member

    Good! I think semi-transparent is a better idea than the totally black you initially ordered. But better use fixed instead of absolute: this way the message will stay put on the browser window instead of disappearing from view if one scrolls down.

  24. windwhistle
    Member

    I would urge everyone to at least put up macmanx's banner right away, and leave it up until SOPA is finally decided one way or the other. It's too subtle for my tastes, but it does serve to get the message up and give folks a link to more info.

  25. windwhistle
    Member

    Panos, thanks for the tip. I'll change it to fixed.

  26. panaghiotisadam
    Member

    You're welcome!

  27. windwhistle
    Member

    Well, my cobbled together code didn't like the fixed thing. Your code was much cleaner. So I added the transparency to yours. Best of all, I assume anyone can use it. That's exactly what I was after. I'll try to put it here for others to copy:

    <div align="center" style="position:fixed;width:100%;height:100%;top:0;right:0;background-color:#000;-moz-opacity:0.8;opacity:.80;filter:alpha(opacity=80);text-align:center;font-size:800%;font-weight:bold;padding-top:300px;"><a style="color:#fff;" href="URL" target="_blank">Stop SOPA</a></div>

  28. windwhistle
    Member

    Oops. I left out the target page for more info. This will do that:

    <div align="center" style="position:fixed;width:100%;height:100%;top:0;right:0;background-color:#000;-moz-opacity:0.8;opacity:.80;filter:alpha(opacity=80);text-align:center;font-size:800%;font-weight:bold;padding-top:300px;"><a style="color:#fff;" href="http://americancensorship.org/" target="_blank">Stop SOPA</a></div>

  29. windwhistle
    Member

    Uh oh, having a senior moment here. Have prepared a post to tell people how to use the blackout widget, but I've forgotten how to post the code for them to copy without it actually becoming active within my post. Enclosing it in didn't seem to work. If I use backticks, they show up in the post. Help, please.

  30. windwhistle
    Member

    Er, the was meant to be the <code></code> thing.

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