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Blog Redesign Update

I’ve narrowed down the blog redesign templates to a couple of choices. It’s pretty exciting, even though the learning curve is CRAZY. How proud will I be, if I really can figure this out on my own? Totally! Last week, while sitting for hours in a surgery waiting room, I read the chapters in WordPress for Dummies on how to customize templates. It requires fiddling in the CSS (cascading style sheets) and uploading new images and stuff via FTP, which is very scary, but I think I can do it … at least enough to make one of these templates more like us.

Right now, a theme called Hanging is the front runner. I hope to figure out how to put some Lilly images, where the foliage is now. I’m sure there are other tweaks I’ll try too, but we’ll see.

I like the design elements of this one, called Comment Central, but I would need to change some of the images and the text font.

As I said last week, once I get things to look the way I want, then I’ll have to tackle moving all our content (posts, photos, videos, audio). Oy!


Roxanne Hawn

Trained as a traditional journalist and based in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, USA, I'm a full-time freelance writer for magazines, websites, and private clients. My areas of specialty include everything in the lifestyles arena, including health and home, personal finance and other consumer interests, relationships and trends, people and business profiles ... and, of course, all things pet related. I don't just love dogs. I need them in my life. Seriously.

Frugal Kiwi - January 13, 2010

I’m glad to hear you’ve been able to move forward with the new design, even if it was in a waiting room. I look forward to seeing the final product.

MarthaandMe - January 10, 2010

This looks gorgeous! I’ve got to get my main web site completely redone – ugh.

Maery - January 8, 2010

Question for KB – How do you know that people are copying your photos? I know I get hits because people google and find my photos, but I don’t know if they actually do anything with them. I used to include descriptions in my photo links (for example, alt=”cougar”, which probably drew even more hits, which is good but not if they copy them.

Nancy - January 8, 2010

I’m impressed–I’m still working on both my blogs with WP’s standard themes, which are easy to work with (because I’m a wimp). Can’t wait to see COMH’s new look!

KB - January 8, 2010

Wow, way to go Roxanne! It’s tough to figure this stuff out.

I’ve been trying to protect my images and videos because the lion ones are being taken so very much. But, I cannot make any html scripts that are supposed to protect content actually word. Grrrr.

Maery - January 8, 2010

I’ve longed to find a blog class or a good book explaining the behind the scenes workings. I know how websites work and can design those but blogs don’t seem to work the same and I’m afraid I’m going to do something to screw the whole layout up if I mess with the CSS too much. I think WordPress is more user friendly and there’s more you can do with it than blogger. Good luck!

DK Wall & The Thundering Herd - January 8, 2010

In my redesign, I started where you are – looking at the various free themes. But I ended up buying a premium theme. Why? The things that you can do – with ease – was absolutely amazing.

The two most popular are Thesis – http://diythemes.com/ – and Headway – http://headwaythemes.com/ . Even though Thesis is more popular and more established, I chose Headway because of the Leaf concept (amazingly easy to add content to sidebars) and the Visual Editor (redesign your website by drag and drop not PHP programming.

Totally amazing and far, far more than a typical theme offers.

DK Wall & The Thundering Herd - January 8, 2010

In my redesign, I started where you are – looking at the various free themes. But I ended up buying a premium theme. Why? The things that you can do – with ease – was absolutely amazing.

The two most popular are Thesis – http://diythemes.com/ – and Headway – http://headwaythemes.com/ . Even though Thesis is more popular and more established, I chose Headway because of the Leaf concept (amazingly easy to add content to sidebars) and the Visual Editor (redesign your website by drag and drop not PHP programming.

Totally amazing and far, far more than a typical theme offers.

DK Wall & The Thundering Herd - January 8, 2010

In my redesign, I started where you are – looking at the various free themes. But I ended up buying a premium theme. Why? The things that you can do – with ease – was absolutely amazing.

The two most popular are Thesis – http://diythemes.com/ – and Headway – http://headwaythemes.com/ . Even though Thesis is more popular and more established, I chose Headway because of the Leaf concept (amazingly easy to add content to sidebars) and the Visual Editor (redesign your website by drag and drop not PHP programming.

Totally amazing and far, far more than a typical theme offers.

DK Wall & The Thundering Herd - January 8, 2010

In my redesign, I started where you are – looking at the various free themes. But I ended up buying a premium theme. Why? The things that you can do – with ease – was absolutely amazing.

The two most popular are Thesis – http://diythemes.com/ – and Headway – http://headwaythemes.com/ . Even though Thesis is more popular and more established, I chose Headway because of the Leaf concept (amazingly easy to add content to sidebars) and the Visual Editor (redesign your website by drag and drop not PHP programming.

Totally amazing and far, far more than a typical theme offers.

Roxanne Hawn - January 7, 2010

Don’t be too impressed, yet. All I’ve figured out so far is how to find, download, then FTP new themes into my WP admin panel.

Alisa Bowman - January 7, 2010

You are my new hero. I didn’t realize you were teaching this to yourself as you went along. Wow. The design looks awesome and you are awesome for figuring out how to do it.

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