Demi Moore may disagree, but being married has more than its share of advantages. You see, apart from being lovely company, my husband is what I can only describe as a Web Mastermind. Like many, he never aspired to his current profession, rather; trained architect, property developer, then founder of web based company. Knowledge of all things web is certainly rather handy for a fervently blogging spouse. There is though, distinct truth to the ‘married to the baker, eat stale bread’ syndrome. Only after months and months of arduous nagging, long awkward silences over dinner, remote control supremacy, and frenzied debates in the pub; was I finally persuaded. I had to upgrade my blog and move to WordPress.
Why move to WordPress?
Much endeared, Blogger has been great to work with, easy to operate, providing all one could need when starting a blog. Though, a year of writing posts and reading the countless words of wisdom on fellow blogger’s immaculate conceptions, one can’t help but start to think beyond the confounds of the Blogger template. According to the Mastermind, further development on Blogger would lead to nothing more than a ‘terrible hack’, which is why the ‘cleaner coding’ on WordPress presented the best option. The degree of tidiness of web coding is probably not a concern for many and most probably think web coding to be as exciting as a vegan BBQ, but its interesting that those in the know, hold WordPress in high regard.
Due to stellar demands for the new blog design, there was no choice but to opt for self hosted WordPress and go solo, instead of WordPress.com. That meant theme/template needed to be designed and built, plus a hosting service to be sorted. Being in the trade, the latter was not an issue. Thankfully, the Christmas period provided the required time for the design and build, so work started in earnest. I’m very pleased to report, that our marriage has not only survived the preliminary crucial, though hazardous IKEA bookshelf build phase, but also our new business-client relationship. Mastermind is a keeper. Thank goodness he doesn’t actually bother reading my posts…
New design
The new design is simple, built around the content. Elements of the former blog have come with; post archiving menus and the much loved background image now much improved, as no longer distracting from the content. Clever Mastermind has designed the new site so that the background is seasonally relevant, as each post has its own very background image. Furthermore, Mastermind’s genius includes a super simple application that can alter side bar colour, logo design and light/dark background image screens for optimum image impact. In terms of gallery/picture display in the actual blog posts, one is often limited due to impact on used page load/download speed. Though, use of a wizzy plug-in now enables a simple slide show, easily navigatable and allowing for an endless supply (within reason) of photos. The new site has been browser tested to ensure it appears as designed. Surprisingly though, there is still a staggering number of people using decrepit browsers such as IE6, which was released in 2001. On behalf of all web developers out there, herein lies a plea to update your browsers regularly. Just think of all that you are missing! Mastermind has done what he can to make the site presentable for those using old browsers such as IE6, IE7 and IE8, though new features such as large background image and photo gallery are just not compatible.
Still to come
As my memory is fast going down like a cow pat, a plant database will be added to remind me which/where plants were bought and planted. Similarly, an events diary will be included to help remind yours truly to buy tickets and show up on time.
Perhaps, if I had caved sooner, upgrading the blog would have been more straightforward but we have both rather enjoyed the process and are secretly very pleased with the end result. You have been spared the technical details of the process, content management system, plug-ins, etc., but the Mastermind is very willing to share those details with you or any other or WordPress query. Who knows, if there are oodles of questions, he may need to be convinced to actually write a post… Go on!!