If you notice at the bottom of each page of this page, Word Press likes to remind you that they are helping me power this site. If you’ve ever used blogging or social networking sites like xanga or mySpace, then you’ll know that those sites give you the ability to easily change your sites look and feel (aka theme). Word Press has the same capability.
I haven’t worked with html, css, and Javascript since I left Medrule, and php since never. As you can see, I’m still using this crappy cornflower blue theme that is better than my nonexistant crappy theme. I’ve been banging my head against the wall for the past day trying to create me own Word Press theme. The strategy of my design was to take the default theme (the one your’e seeing now) and go from there. That was how I created my first webpage back in Desktop Publishing in high school and I thought I could do the same now. It was a good way of learning by example.
Alas, things are not that simple anymore. First off, I don’t have a good understanding of php. Second, I’ve also seem to have forgotten all the css stuff that I use to know. Thirdly, I still haven’t found a good text editor with syntax highlighting that is free. Fourthly, Notepad just ain’t cutting it in terms of editing css and php files. Niether is the crappy JEdit tool that I’ve been testing out. Creating a theme isn’t as easy as jumping on that ten speed Huffy mountain bike that you haven’t ridden in ten years and riding it down the street again.
Of course, I could easily use an existing theme but that just doesn’t feel right because it’s not my own. The proper way of going about this is probably to buy that php/css/mysql book and the proper image/editing software, then spend the next month or two creating the theme. However, I’m not sure I have the patience or the time at the moment to work on this. There are more pertinent issues to worry about right now.
So for the time being, this blog will have to look the way it looks: stock. Boooooo!