March 24th, 2008 Why I Won’t Leave WordPress

Despite not having any programmer blood or ability in me, I love scripts. Platforms. Software. Whatever you want to call them. I love them.

I especially love reading reviews on blog scripts and CMS software. Not because I have any intention of moving away from WordPress, but because I’m curious. I can’t really say why I like it. But I enjoy reading reviews, I enjoy downloading scripts I haven’t tried before, I enjoy testing them on my computer (mucho thanks to WAMP).

I spend hours a week doing things related to this; Testing, reading reviews, looking up tutorials, comparing scripts. It just makes me happy inside.

As you know (by the title of this post, my WordPress category, and the footer of this site) I run WordPress. I’ve been running WordPress for a little over half a year now and I can’t be any happier. But this wasn’t my first time using WordPress. I actually hated it back in the 1.0 days.

But that’s a long story. WordPress and I have had our hiccups but they weren’t anything drastic, after about two months we moved in together permanently and WordPress and I have had lovely little babies. Yes, I produce children that fast.

So why am I looking at other software behind WordPress’ back? I have no itention of leaving WordPress behind, it does absolutely everything I wanted it to do when I embarked for a holy grail of a script.

Initially half a year ago I got tired of having to manually edit my pages. Some people couldn’t comment on my blog, the comment form of the script I was using didn’t work for everyone. I wanted nice urls instead of everything ending with .php. All in all, I wanted something that was simple, easy to customize, and let me manage my whole website via admin interface.

I went through a lot of scripts and then I “broke down” and used WordPress. Haven’t looked back.

I look at other scripts because I’m curious. I like to see what’s out there. I whole-heartedly believe that, with anything, there is always something out there better than what you’re using. So I’m constantly curious and I like checking out what’s in the wild. But at the end of the day, I come back to trusty WordPress. We cuddle in each other’s arms and watch the kids try to kill each other.

I’ve tried the two big ones (along with dozens of other scripts), ExpressionEngine and MovableType. They were great and fun to use, but I won’t be switching to either of them.

Why not ExpressionEngine?

Why not MovableType?

In fact, the only script that I would ever consider to switch to isn’t even a major player but it’s developing very well, it’s called PivotX. I’m keeping my eye on it. I’ve already tried the last two alphas and I’m really impressed. It’ll be going into open beta (it’s been in open alpha) at the end of March / Beginning of April.

Posted in Webbie, WordPress | 2 Comments »


March 8th, 2008 Why WordPress isn’t the Best

I have to say, I’m pretty bummed out about WordPress’ security. I know that the good ol’ folks at WordPress.org try, and it’s indeed a fabulous piece of software.

Hell, for years I went on saying how much I hated it and now I honestly can’t find any other blogging platform that lives to my expectations as WordPress has.

But the security… Oi.

I still stick to my previous points on it’s security (WordPress Security Candy) even though I’m no guru at all. But I just want to take a moment here to rant about the security before I go to bed.

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Posted in WordPress | 3 Comments »


January 14th, 2008 WordPress: Just Some Things I Learned Along the Way

So I spent almost a day of my life working on this design you see here and it isn’t all that amazing or anything. It’s simple and to the point, sure.

The design wasn’t what took so long, it was the coding. The blasted coding.

It’s not like I’ve never seen what X/HTML or CSS code looks like, it’s that I went so long without coding absolutely anything. I’ve been on the worst “dry spell” for almost a year. Design and coding-wise.

What took so freakishly long was that first of all, I had no idea what I was doing. I got lost on WordPress.org looking for help, even (yeah… no laughing, please). So I thought I should help any of you people sitting on the fence about creating your own WordPress theme. Tip numero uno:

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January 13th, 2008 New Layout and Other Loves

If you didn’t read the previous post, that’s quite alright. I just wanted to bring attention to something amazing that I thought would never happen-

I designed a WordPress theme! Yes, this mauve-and-tan (at least that’s how it’s supposed to look) design was made by yours truly. It was designed with love on Photoshop 7.0 (screw the new versions, I have my reasons), and it was coded after painful hours (almost 18!) with my tears of frustration.

Why that long to code it? Well, for you people familiar with WordPress, think back to your first theme. Wasn’t that just spit-in-your-face, ice-down-your-pants fantastic? And for those not familiar with WordPress, think about a time when you saw your good ol’ ma or pa struggle with trying to figure out that awesome MP3 player you got them for their birthday that one year (example may vary. substitute MP3 player with another tech and parents with other family members if need be).

It was pretty damn frustrating, but here it is. The worst part is over with, and I now have more or less a grasp on how WordPress does it’s magic. Educational frustration? Yes, indeed. I’ll be tweaking the design and content around as the days go by so don’t worry if stuff might look weird.

Onto a more awesome subject, JD (the one who holds the key to my heart, of course) gave me very late Christmas gifts on Thursday. I won’t spoil the surprise because I need to find my camera and take a picture of the stuff he got me. Once I do, I will commence the gushing and happiness on another post. Because he deserves at least that much from me, haha.

Interesting note: I now have a wonderful computer mouse! Thanks to Fuzzy, my good friend Xelis’ fiance who was stubborn and kind enough to purchase it for me. I picked it out, but he did the paying (insert lol). It’s a Microsoft mouse and it’s so awesome. Magnifying-glass feature, and when I press the scrollwheel in I can switch through applications / windows. Here is a link to the mouse’s specifications and whatnot.

Thank you everyone for the kind comments on the new design! And now that I’ve designed a complete WordPress theme for this site, I’ll never change it ever again.

Edit: Does anyone know of a plugin for WordPress that’ll let me put stuff up on sale like a shopping cart? I’ve tried e-Commerce, Yaks and eShop already. e-Commerce is broken for me. eShop was annoying and Yaks relied on posts, not pages.

Posted in Computers, WordPress | Comments Off


January 11th, 2008 So Tired

After so many hours it’s not funny, I’ve finally made my first WordPress theme. If you were here earlier and saw a mess, yeah. Sorry about that.

The truth of the matter is I’m too tired to talk about the new theme or celebrate. It’s not done, either.

I still hate theming WordPress. I still hate it so very much.

So, this will be the layout until another year goes by. Happy 2008.

Edit: After about an hour’s worth of a break I came back to this layout and noticed the contrast blows like crazy. I don’t like it.

Upping the contrast will make the purple look pink though. Oh well. Who the Hell cares.

I’ll fix up the CSS and up the contrast on the images tomorrow.

Edit2: Actually it looks fine. Just woke up but I’ll be going back to sleep.

Either way, I’ll be making a little twist with this layout once it’s done. So whoo.

Posted in Webbie, WordPress | 3 Comments »


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