Playing with WordPress
Posted on December 31, 2006
Filed Under Uncategorized | 2 Comments
I spent some time yesterday with my new WordPress blog. Slowly, but surely I’m figuring things out.
I decided on a theme that I liked, Trisexuality Standard, by Scott Jarkoff.
I edited the style sheet so it went from this:
to something like this. I’m still playing with it. The end result may be this, something similar or something completely different. I kind of like where this is heading.
It doesn’t quite work in IE 7 yet (see screen shot on blog). I have no idea what it looks like in IE 6. I have to assume it has the same problems. I know what’s wrong…there’s a background image that repeats down the footer that’s not repeating in IE. But I haven’t quite worked out how to fix it yet. I am so in love with Firebug for understanding and working with HTML/CSS layouts. But without something similar for IE it’s much harder to troubleshoot those layout issues. I’ll get it eventually. If I don’t, it’s not completely horrible in IE as it is.
I’m having fun doing this given that I have no particular time table to keep to. If it takes me a week or it takes me 6 months to switch over, it really doesn’t matter.
I imported a bunch of entries just to have something to play with as I add in plug-ins, configure the style sheet and move things around.
I can see why folks are so high on WordPress. It’s fun to make a change and simply refresh the window to see it in action. Not having to rebuild pages is something that is very easy to get used to.
links for 2006-12-30
Posted on December 30, 2006
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Yeah, and we buy cars just to check our makeup in the vanity mirror
Posted on December 29, 2006
Filed Under PocketPC | 3 Comments
I hate it when this happens. I hate when articles note the disparity between male and female tech users and chalk it up to something inane like “well, it doesn’t come in pink.”
The latest comes from PocketNow, which reports on the results of spb Software’s annual survey:
Use of Pocket PCs, male versus female, is 93% and 7%, respectively
This tells us a couple of things. Generally, females are more fashion conscious, so the fact that they are still straying from Pocket PC devices tells us that OEMs still have work to be done in creating aesthetically appealing devices. Second, Pocket PCs are more viewed as productivity devices, rather than lifestyle devices (as is the case with a RAZR, for example), so woman choose not to accessories with a “work” device.
Females are more fashion conscious?!? Is he serious?!?
Of course. Women don’t carry PDAs to sync their crazy schedules, get directions, read email and surf the web, take notes, read novels, play games, organize lists or manage databases. We carry PDAs because they match our shoes. We don’t actually want to get any work done, we are only interested in “lifestyle” devices that help us shop and look pretty.
So why does this survey find that 93% of its respondents are male? As one of the 7% of my gender who took the survey, let me tell you my theory. First of all, the survey itself was only linked in sites that are tech-heavy and aimed at the guys. If sites that are 93% male are saying “here’s the spb survey” then why is it a surprise that the results reflect that?
But it’s a valid point that more Pocket PC owners are male. Why? Because, and this is just my opinion, a woman looks at a device and asks herself, “What can I do with this?” and a man looks at a device and ask himself, “What can this do?” A Pocket PC device doesn’t present a woman with a logical answer to her question out of the box. It can launch rockets, and a man will say “Cool!” while a woman will say, “What use do I have for a rocket? Have it put dinner on the table and then we’ll talk.”
links for 2006-12-28
Posted on December 28, 2006
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(tags: wordpress movabletype)
A View from Wordpress? Thinking about it.
Posted on December 27, 2006
Filed Under Uncategorized | 2 Comments
I started this blog on Movable Type version 2.0.something in January 2003 (coming up on 4 years!). Since then, I’ve watched from the sidelines as WordPress came into its own as the blog publishing platform. I never seriously considered switching, mostly because of the effort involved in learning a whole new way of doing things and it was easier to stick with what I knew.
But lately, I’ve been thinking about making the switch. First, Six Apart seems to have lost their passion for the application that put them on the map. Between LiveJournal, TypePad and Vox the platform that started it all is lagging behind. Second, I miss the little things like trackbacks/pingbacks that actually work. I turned them off recently. No point in keeping them on to collect spam and not actually get any valid hits.
Web Worker Daily is on WordPress.com, and I’ve been impressed at the editing interface as compared to Movable Type. Got me interested in learning more about it. I’m starting to get tired of this layout, but I don’t have the time or interest to redesign it right now. Seems to make more sense to take the parts of it that I really like and are most identified with me (the header) and work it into an already existing theme that gives me more sidebar flexibility with little effort on my part.
So on a whim, I took advantage of MediaTemple’s one-click install and about 3 seconds later, WordPress 2.0.4 is running at blog.momathome.com. I know I should upgrade it to the latest stable version (2.0.5) before doing anything. I also hear that WordPress 2.1 will be out soon. This will be my “playground” for learning WordPress, and maybe eventually it will take over here. We’ll see what happens.
It’s more than just changing the look & feel. I have 4 years (1571 posts and 2108 comments) to think about. I have to decide things like whether or not I want to keep the URLs the way they are now (/2006/12/name_of_post.php) or change them to the more typical WordPress way of doing things (/2006/12/name_of_post/) and all the fun .htaccess mod_rewrite joy that goes with that. I have to be sure that Media Temple’s MySQL issues are stable. With my current blog and its static publishing, if my database is funky I only lose the ability to edit/post. If I go to WordPress, a funky database takes down the whole blog, both the internal and external views. Just some stuff to consider.
