I’ve never been lost, but I was mighty turned around for three days once.
—Daniel Boone
I spent hours and hours on the computer the past few days, experimenting with one of the sophisticated plugins of WordPress. As I expected, it didn’t work quite the way it was supposed to. And my hosting service changed the way it does backups, so I had to rewrite two posts and type in the comments people had made. I also ended up doing something different than I set out to do. All in all, it was a great trip!
I love the Daniel Boone quote because whenever we try something new and complicated, we’re bound to be confused. It’s part of the process. It doesn’t mean we’re lost and won’t eventually figure things out. I think working on projects like this must be like walking in a complicated maze. A lot of people do it, presumably for the challenge and the sense of elation when they figure it out. What do you think? Have you ever walked in a maze, or something equivalent?
I started playing with WordPress because these posts are supposed to be conversation starters, and the comments were getting confusing because my seven-year-old theme couldn’t make use of the new threaded-comment (letting you reply to individual comments) feature in WordPress. I decided not to upgrade my theme by myself — it would take me way more than a few days to do it — so I hired someone. In the meantime it dawned on me it was past time to combine my two posts, and that maybe I should try …. You get the picture.
In the meantime I thought I would use this Twenty Ten theme from WordPress, with my own header. As it turns out, I love the picture so much I may continue with this theme even after I get my new one. What do you think?
The only mazes I’ve ever done were on paper.
I like the picture. One of the nice things about many of the modern themes is that the header image can be readily changed.
Is your developer creating a new theme or adapting an existing premium theme to your needs?
I was surprised at how easy it was to put in my own header. That’s a great improvement.
My developer is writing a child theme for the Genesis framework. The idea is that the child takes care of the appearance, and the framework changes as WordPress changes. I asked that the child theme look just like my old modification of the Copyblogger theme. The new Copyblogger theme is now a Genesis child theme, so even if I don’t use my new theme I’ll learn something by comparing it with the new Copyblogger.
Mike,
Thanks for mentioning that about headers. I wasn’t considering themes that didn’t have a header picture. It turns out they let me add one. I would never have guessed if it hadn’t been for your comment.
I tend to do things your maze way. I don’t take good advice to heart. I have to learn the hard way. 🙁 🙂
Actually I’m happy to take advice. The trouble is it’s often wrong or not-quite-right, so I have to try different things until something works. When things are complicated and always changing the advice is often outmoded. But it can be good enough to give a clue about what to try next.
wow.
i admire you so much for messing around with plug~ins.
i would try myself but if i messed things up really badly… then i’d have to ask the captain. and his business is growing and he’s busy with new apps. i couldn’t hear myself saying…. HELP? I’VE DESTROYED YOUR WORK! cuz that’s what it would be.
so i happily just leave the little peanut alone.
i love your header.
it’s so elegant. clean. cool. simple. beautiful
like you!
Yes, I love the picture too. I was going to use this theme temporarily until I got my new one. I first tried another favorite panoramic picture, but it didn’t look right. When I thought of this one I fell in love with the theme.
The pic reminds me of your land
Yes, it’s from this picture of our house from a distance:
I think it looks better cropped.
Evan,
Thanks again for those links you sent me about moving posts, comments, etc. from one site to another. They were invaluable.
Yes, I love your header picture as well…
As to “maze” – I enter them regularly in my life.
They arrive usually unexpected, tangle me up on different time frames, make me go on or stop and restart. Actually not always restart, exactly or not even get it back off the drawing board.
I might be doing something else and the maze will reappear, not always for the right reasons or needs…
A few months ago, I tried to rejig the layout of this house and ran into an extraordinary problem because of the angles/doorway layout. I had to shut down that rejig but in the process before the maze got dead-ended many other things got moved; some are still not anywhere and many other things have returned…the living room, looks very untidy, some say lived-in!
I am now slightly in a maze, although the outcome is known, it won’t just get there for a great deal more months – even though I want it all done now. I spoke of this last half of the year being one of “new thing” for me but until it is further on – no point it getting you all entangled in this particular maze 🙂
BTW weather man found a whole lot of buttons (in his maze) and turned them all on so that he could see they were working including: wind, sun, damp, cold, rain, thunder, hail, and the slanting mechanism needed a play with!
The hardest part is to be patient and not try to push too hard when we have to wait. That’s hard!
This is great!–your comment.
The new look is beautiful. Do stay with it please. And I still stay, combining the two blogs is a good idea.
Combining the sites was a no-brainer, once I woke up to the fact! And I will keep this theme — I still have to figure out how to let people subscribe and will keep working on that part.
You may find this useful. http://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/feedburner
Thanks for the suggestion. I already took the time to do it by hand so I could keep my icons and formatting. It was an interesting exercise!