Been putting this off, but
it’s time. (Cue scary music) I have to update my version of Wordpress. If I disappear for a while, you’ll know why. Went fine on my local copy, so I’m hoping…
I keep a copy of my blog running on my PC at home, and always try out new stuff there before I screw with the online version. Anything can happen, and I sure don’t want to kill my blog…
Also time to be making some more monster pots. Been putting this off because it makes a giant mess I have to clean…but it’s time to start the flowers I want, so I gotta do it. The pots I made back in April or so are holding up well so far, so it’s time to try again. I need a few 14″ pots, as well as a small trough in which to plant some creeping thyme and other herbs. I’m gonna use the top of a small BBQ grill as the form for that one. Wish me luck!
Later, time for Hubby’s birthday cake.
EDIT: Well, so far so good. I’ve updated and the blog hasn’t crashed. Now I’m trying a new toy, a video player… just a little e-card for Hubby.
I really just wanted to talk to you, in general, but this seems the only way (lacking a “contacts” or an email address… so…. I’ve been considering the Wasteland theme and started looking at how it looks for other blogs. YOU … well, I can hardly recognize it for all your modifications! I’m not quite sure what you kept. But I’d like to know how you’ve done all these changes. I esp like your sidebar stuff (so much, so many images, special catagory/headings, and the addition to the title bar, etc.) Maybe I could communicate re that?
And…. great site…. and content!
Thanks,
Russ
Oh, boy, I hardly know where to start. The sidebars are just image links. I took screen captures of the sites to which I wanted to link, and just used the standard html “image as link” format. The list titles are just an image I made as a transparent png and use as a background image in the CSS. The header was actually adapted from another theme, I believe it’s called Sliding Door. I searched the support forum and found a way to incorporate it into another theme.
The partly-transparent blog title comes from the code of the Atahualpa theme.
I use the Firefox browser; you can get a couple of very useful add-ons. One’s called Firebug, the other Web Developer’s Toolbar. You can use them to look at the code of a site and figure out how it works, or make changes on the fly to fine-tune your page. They are both essential if you want to play with changing themes and such. You should try it and compare my code and CSS to the original, then you can see more specifically what I did.
Mostly it was alot of reading and research, and a big mess of trial and error…the graphics were made by me using Paintshop Pro. I honestly doubt I could tell you what I changed. I just kept playing with the code and adjusting it until it looked the way I wanted. And, probably due to ignorance, I refused to accept “You can’t do that!” and kept at it until it worked. And, truth be told, I doubt I could do it the same way again. If I started over, it’d probably end up looking completely different.
One thing I would recommend is installing a copy of WP on your local machine and use that to tinker with. That way, if you screw up really bad, you don’t break your online blog. I found a tut here that shows you, very simply, how to do that. I would copy the relevant portions to a text editor like Notepad, play with the code, paste it back in, see if it worked, and if not, I’d copy it again and keep tinkering till it got right. Took me quite some time, and there are still things I’d like to change, but there are only so many hours in a day…
Any more questions, feel free…