wordpress

A fresh coat of paint …

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I’d been using the same theme on this blog for almost 13 years without any real updates. After upgrading to WordPress 7.0 I decided it was probably time to freshen up. Right now I’m trying out the free version of GeneratePress which seemed to be the closest to what I had been using to at least make the initial transition smooth. I’ve still got quite a few things to tinker with, but at least for now things seem to be working for the most part. Bear with me as I finally “get current.”

Freshening up for the New Year

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As part of my annual new year’s cleanup, I’ve upgraded to v2.0 of SriniG’s F2 theme, my first facelift to the blog since 2010. I still have a few minor CSS tweaks and fixes to make, but for the most part everything should be good and look nice, especially on mobile devices.

To streamline things a bit, I’ve moved the Categories and Posts by Month dropdowns and the tag cloud out of the left sidebar and onto the new Archives tab in the top menu navigation. This also replaced the old Index tab which just contained a list of every post on the site. That list is still available, but it made more sense to be part of the Archives tab along with those other archive browsing options.

If you see anything messed up, let me know in the comments!

New theme

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You might notice a slightly different look to the blog today, compared to yesterday (or the last time you visited). I switched from Srini G’s Fluid Blue theme (which I’ve been using ever since I moved to WordPress) to his updated F2 theme (which is basically Fluid Blue optimized for WordPress 3.x).

Other than moving my sidebar to the left, and a few other minor customizations, the look-and-feel is basically the same. I also took this opportunity to learn how to use theme inheritance so my customizations aren’t lost when the original theme is updated by the author.

Everything should be working but if you come across something that’s broken or looks strange, please let me know!

“More” means less

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I just discovered the “More” tag in WordPress. Since some of my posts tend to be long and contain a lot of images, using the “More” tag will a) make me focus on writing better and more interesting introductory paragraphs to my posts and b) provide a cleaner, shorter home page that loads faster with less inline images.

I’ve gone back and updated my last few posts to include the tag. Going forward, please bear with me as I try to find a good balance of when using “More” makes browsing the home page easier vs. it just being annoying because you can’t see the entire post without clicking another link.

Sent from my iPhone

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I’m writing this post on my iPhone using the WordPress app. It doesn’t have the kitchen sink features of the browser-based interface (for example, you can’t insert hyperlinks — I added that from the web after the post was published), but it seems good for writing basic posts or editing existing ones.

I’ve Switched to WordPress

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I’d been using Blogger intermittently since 2002 but didn’t start using it for “real” blogging until about a year ago. The latest Blogger problem finally gave me the incentive I needed to look into other blogging solutions. Based on a recommendation from a co-worker, I’ve switched to WordPress (so that’s why the site looks different now).

I started the switch last Friday night. First I downloaded and installed WordPress on my server, which was extremely easy. I played around with it a bit and was impressed with what I saw so I decided I didn’t need to check out any other packages and starting migrating my stuff from Blogger.

That part turned out to be a little more difficult than I anticipated. For whatever reason, just exporting my blog from Blogger and then trying to import it into WordPress using a straight XML file wasn’t working. WordPress has a Blogger import tool, but it only works with Blogspot-hosted blogs (which mine was not). I eventually had to just switch my blog to being hosted on Blogspot temporarily, which then alllowed me to pull everything (posts, categories, comments, etc.) into WordPress.

Then I started the cleanup, which took me the rest of the weekend: fixing permalinks, cleaning out tags and code Blogger left behind, moving images, etc. Luckily most of this easy because WordPress stores all of its information in a MySQL database. Since I know SQL, I was able to write different scripts (through phpMyAdmin) to clean up my data (rather than editing individual posts, although I did still have to do a little of that). I also put some redirects in place so that people who subscribed to the feed (all two of you! 😉 ) and other folks who have linked to my posts wouldn’t have broken links due to the changes in URLs. If you find anything still broken, please let me know!

After getting all of my data transfered and cleaned I was able to start tweaking: finding a nice theme, configuring widgets and plugins, getting everything to look just the way I want it to.  This is the part that will be an ongoing process.

I am really impressed with the flexibility and power of WordPress. I don’t know why I didn’t switch sooner! A lot of the things I had to code around manually in Blogger (like emoticons or categories in the sidebar) are standard features. The flexibility of using plugins, the look and variety of the themes, the PHP-driven interface, and the SQL back-end really come together in a nice, cohesive application.

So I’m happy … what do you think?