03Jan09 New year, new looks

This may not be 100% finished yet but I’m calling it quits for now. One can only take so much of staring at code and cursing WordPress. Really, why do you have to install a plugin in order to use PHP inside the content of a page? I usually just create a template for a specific page when I want to do that but this time I didn’t want to bother.

Also regarding WordPress and PHP, I cannot for the life of me figure out why it does not like my contact form the way I have it set up. It was all going swimmingly until the information actually validated. After that I just kept getting a “Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.” I’ve been looking at that for hours and I’m still not sure what’s going on.

I also cannot figure out why the time isn’t displaying properly on my tweets. It works perfectly on my local copy but for some reason is 6 hours off on the actual site. I really don’t think that has anything to do with the fact that I was testing on WordPress 2.7 but who knows. Reason for that was so that I could find out if this theme would break when I upgrade. I’ll probably be saving that for tomorrow.

Anyway, enough with the bad and on to the good stuff! Back in November I started working on a 2 column layout that had some kind of glowy header. The structure of the layout was OK. However, I couldn’t stand the look of the header and the sidebar just seemed off to me. I ditched that theme and decided to make a 1 column layout instead. Again, the structure was pretty good but it lacked oomph. I say that a lot and I’m sure my husband looks at me like I’ve lost it (again) but it’s hard for me to describe. It was just missing that special something. I did know that I wanted to go with a larger text size and have plenty of white space.

While in this rut of sorts I decided to poke around a few Photoshop tutorials. I found out that either I’m not so great with Photoshop or the version I have is just too outdated. In reality it’s probably a combination of the two. I found PSDTuts article on creating seamless patterns but it wasn’t until I read Natalie Jost’s tutorial on Texture that it finally clicked. The header image you see is a result of that. The texture is actually a combination of a stock paper texture and several of my own photos. The font is Jane Austen. The rest of the credits can be found on the domain page.

Arranging the site was easier than creating the header, believe it or not. I wanted my tweets to be above the rest of the entries because I update that more often than I write entries. Sometimes they even contain meaningful information. I then decided to showcase the latest entry by itself, followed by a list of the 3 most recent posts (excluding the latest post). That took a bit of modification to the Recent Posts plugin that I used but it was well worth it.

Finally, I’ve started to make the site a little more dynamic depending on what type of content is being viewed. The setup I’ve just talked about was mainly for the main page. Post pages do not include tweets or recent posts. Pages have their own set of sub navigation. My to do list includes making the footer dynamic as well.

Overall I’m pleased with the results. For a while I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to make anything work out to my satisfaction. There’s still a few rough edges but like I said, one can only take so much of fiddling with this stuff.

To do list:

• Fix that blasted form mailer, one way or another.
• Tweak more of the content, particularly the “About” section.
• Incorporate a search box.
• Make the footer more dynamic.
• Separate pings/trackbacks from other comments. My current setup becomes rather messy when they are lumped together.
• Polish any other rough edges anyone points out to me. *hint hint*

Make sure you visit the main site if you’re reading just this article!