Postcards from the Funny Farm

A few people have asked me about my recent theme changes so I wanted to address it here in one place rather than in several emails and comments.  It’s been a very good thing.

Most people who read my blog know that I have been a theme changer since the beginning. Shelly Tucker even addressed it when she interviewed me. I have to experiment, it’s part of my nature. Ironically however, I have come full circle after literally hundreds of themes and am quite content with the best theme (for me) I could find: The Wordpress Default: Kubrick. Let me give you the top five reasons I have chosen to use this theme:

1. It is always updated state-of-the-art: When WordPress updates, they update 2 themes with the software: Default and classic (which you may see me use from time to time as well now for this reason).  Many other themes break and lose their look when you upgrade Wordpress.
2. It’s simple and clean.  Because I have tried so many themes and gotten carried away at times with graphics and layout, it is refreshing to return to my primary priority: content.  I want to write a daily column that works on all browsers and computers.  Default does that.  Writing was my motive to start doing this in December of 2006 and I think the scattered themes got in the way of that energy.  I may tweak here and there, but I have decided that clean is better and energy into the writing is best.
3. It has a big header for my wife to help me make Photoshop png’s on.  Do you like the one we made last weekend?  It is very special to me being my home town of Victorville (retro) and a postcard I used to have on my tumblelog.  Thanks to Sarah for the work she did.  I styled it somewhat after the “My Diary” theme I found a while back by Gecko and Fly.  It’s one worth checking out if for nothing else, graphic ideas.
4. Last, It’s familiar and what I started with.  Before I even knew how to change or upload a theme, I was writing ecolumns (as I affectionately call them) on Kubrick with the blue header.  To me, it feels like coming home.  I feel like I have so much going on now with this blog … I am right where I want to be.  I don’t want to get confused with flashy themes anymore.  I will limit my creative innovation to Photoshopped headers, sidebar features and links, and the artistry of writing these ecolumns, or articles, or posts … what have you.

My hope is that it will free my energies up to write even funnier, more creative and innovative stuff while presenting it to you in a dependable and accessible format.  In short: It’s a focus issue. I hope you guys like it and keep coming back often!  You won’t see much more messing with themes here, and if you do, my 12-step sponsor at Themeaholics Anonymous says I have to write a really long post to you explaining why every time ;)  What do you look for in a theme?

I’ve tweaked my theme from this:

To this:

This is getting to be a familiar ritual. When I change themes I have to extend the name character limit to accomodate my good friend’s long name: Jessica the Rock Chick. Most themes come out of the box with 20 charcater limit so I have to go in and make it 30. I hope she knows I am not bothered by this in the slightest. It serves as a great example though of how much is really invloved when you see me change a theme.

Every time I change themes I have to adjust many other things beside name character limits in comments. things. I’ve tried and tried but there is absolutely no theme out there that does what I want and need without a good amount of tweaking. A friend Nick Mercer asked me once, “Have you considered making your own theme?” The answer is yes and I have made several themes. I don’t offer them for download because frankly, they aren’t that innovative. You can get the same out there far more styled and strongly built. That’s why I work with simple themes and tweak them to “make them my own.” For example: The latest theme here at my blog is called Simplr, here are the credits directly from the CSS stylesheet:

/*
THEME NAME: Simplr
THEME URI: plaintxt.org/themes/simplr/
DESCRIPTION: Single column and content-centered. A different type of theme. For WordPress 2.3+.
VERSION: 4.0
AUTHOR: Scott Allan Wallick
AUTHOR URI: http://scottwallick.com/
*/

Here’s just some of what I’ve done to it so far:

1. Added background img url to via css
2. Used a container DIV to separate the header.php from the index.php template files.
3. Added Adsense Ads to the header.php template file
4. Created a custom css DIV to make the sidebars (at bottom) have a white background.
5. Added blogrolling.com javascript to the primary sidebar with a li id. (Blogrolling.com javascript allows me to add my blogroll to all my blogs the same and as I edit with one click, the add or deletion shows across all my blogs through the script. I’m a big fan of tossing the “link” php within Wordpress in favor of Blogrolling.com)
6. Added a li id for ‘Credits’ where I post image button links to my various”condos” online where I hang out. I also posted a typewriter image button to ‘Cheese Enchiladas’ my Best of Weekly Writing blog.
7. Added the Gravatar code (my hope is that many more of my readers down the road will join the free avatar generator Gravatar.com.

At this stage in my blog career, special styling is a must. Therefore, with a new blog, I paste in the many class elements I’ve created into the style.css file - I am posting them below for you to tweak and/or borrow as much as you want (giving back ya know). When I migrate themes, I post this (or parts of it) at the footer and it usually works. Because CSS is “cascading” you can have overlaps/etc so some styles need to be put right under the element they are modifying. Usually I don’t have to do this though. These all worked pasted at the bottom of the Simplr stylesheet. They allow me to make postcards, post-it type posts, specially framed photos, and anything else I can dream up.

What kinds of tweaks do you make to your blog? How’s your css hangin’? I help people for free, so if you have questions or want to do something feel free to ask. Are you happy with your current theme? Would you like me to post the best ways to find and tweak themes in future posts?

The blogger over at Writing Aspirations makes some hefty points about blogging in 2007. Some I agree with, and some I am on the fence about. At any rate, it inspired me to share my history with the internet and writing, it’s been a long road that some bloggers might find helpful, if not interesting. Here we go:

I started writing on a personal website in 1995. I started it free at Geocities, and I didn’t even have my own computer. I accessed the page through California State University Fullerton’s computer lab. As I recall they had MAC’s. I’ve since become a PC guy. Geocities separated sites into categories based on broader interests. Because mine was literature and writing (I was an English major in my last semester at the time), they gave me an “Athens” addy. I remember advancing through the other websites and finding sites ranging from highly busy with too many graphics moving to standard written sites where the personal webmaster seemed more conservative. I remember my first webpage was a diatribe on what my named meant (Damien) and a history of how the “Omen” portrayed it in a false bad light. Seems like 100 years ago! Geocities had an extensive help system that taught me basic html, ie: item in bold and how to make a link, colors, pictures, etc. It was web design for the average joe, and I used it to post the little things going on in my life (and occasional big ones). It was so exciting to learn new tricks, like how to post an animated GIF next to something, how to use a background image, etc. I sent my updated pages with “ecolumns,” as I used to call them, to family and friends on my address list. It was a great way to connect with the people I knew and loved. While with Geocities, I also learned a lot of code secrets from Dynamic Drive.

In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, I discovered phpBB forums.? These replaced owner’s manuals and personal websites. I was, at one time, a posting member of 20 forums. My handle was “jeeptravel,” and you could find me in a search posting on anything from High Desert issues to plumbing to Jeep repair. They were great, but my interest waned when posts seemed to be lost after a few replies. There was no permanence to forums, it got boring. I guess it depends on the forum you frequent, but the ones I went to seemed to dribble down to a core of members that weren’t always as interesting as the technology of the forum made you think. This is an important point when considering the blog question of 2007. I started a few forums of my own through PhP. When you purchase a personal website from a server host like Top Class Host (one of the best and cheapest I’ve found), they automatically include “fantastico” which allows the user to instantly install a forum, blog, or any number of awesome sql database driven items. I use them now to host my blog. Specifically I use WordPress software included in the hosting package. I pay $6.95/month and it is well worth it for the freedom of tweaking I have with my blog and storage on my website. That brings us to the state of blogging in 2007.

Before starting my own “not free” hosted site, I blogged off and on for several years at blogger.com

blogger.com is an awesome free service, but there are MANY great free blogging services out there to check out. Here is a list if you are interested (not in order of anything special):

Live Journal
Yahoo! 360
Windows Live Spaces
Bravenet
Geocities
wordpress.com (The free version/ web-based)

The list could go on and on . . .

Now for my point (sorry for the long history, thanks for reading this long).

Speaking to the question of the blog phenom being a passing fad: I must answer with a cop-out, yes and no.

Yes, the trend of signing up for a free blogging service and writing posts like “Yikes I broke a nail,” will inevitably fade out.

It will grow boring for folks just as MySpace has begun to fade in its popularity. The veneer of technological “wow” will wear off (hmmm three w’s in a row) and these folks will either A) continue to keep their blog as a way to communicate with contacts, or B) Shut it down or abandon it in favor of some new technological toy (I don’t know what that will be just yet).

On the other hand, I must reply “no,” it is not a passing trend because great writers are using it to create “ecolumns” for family and friends more than ever before. It is, in essence, a literary renaissance revival. Everywhere across the globe people are writing. It is a phenomenon of communication . . . like the free website was with geocities and other providers but on a WAYYYYY wider scale. Those who remain blogging through 2007 will be those people who are both good, thoughtful writers AND who are also internet savvy. You have to be with blogging. Keeping up with terms like “trackback” and “ping” is a tough endeavor, if you don’t like computers. But a little interest goes a long way.

So what will the blogosphere become? Here’s my image: A highly and daily more refined set of regular posters who enjoy writing about the world, either in a narrowly defined category, or in a “personal blog” format AND who are internet savvy.

It has been said that topic specific blogs are the only ones that will flourish in the future. I disagree. I think the personal blog and the topic specific ones have their place and there is plenty enough audience out there for the good ones.

~~~~Blog Carnival Submissions below~~~~

Corey presents Web 2.0 posted at myopiniononeverything.com.