Badges are graphics that bloggers and website publishers representing generally affiliations. Traditionally, they are image references which point to graphic files, such as GIFs.

This is a technical design document for the Webzine module for Drupal. It will be updated in an ongoing basis as I work with other Drupal developers.

A decade ago, the term webzine came into vogue simply to mean a web-based magazine. I’d like to breathe new life into it to describe an alternative format to the weblog for online publishing. Whereas the design fundamental of weblog is the reverse-chronological format, the design fundamental of the webzine is separate departments based on the style of the writing. I’m going to describe here how this would be useful for online communities/publishers.

I’ve made my best effort to make them multi-browser compatible, with the help of QuirksMode, a website by PeterPaul Koch of Amsterdam. In every (web-browser) generation there comes along a website which clearly and plainly illustrates the different ways that each browser implements web standards (javascript, DOM, CSS). QuirksMode is it today, and for the foreseeable future. Koch’s illustrations are simple and elegant.

It’s hard to think of a world without news headlines as we know them today, but that existed before 1889, when Joseph Pulitzer stretched headlines beyond a single column and thus made them a more prominent part of the front page.

This describes the story types (akin to departments in magazines) used by Civilities to drive the layout, and help the reader know what’s what. This is in contrast to the all-content-is-blog-posts mentality pandemic through the blogosphere.

A look at the visual growth of weblogs.