The best-laid plans

I had been thinking about revamping the blog for a while. I really liked my simple theme, but the sneaking knowledge that it looked awful in Internet Explorer always bothered me. I had ignored it when I first moved to this domain because I was perfectly fine using Firefox, and I had no idea how to negotiate between the two browsers. I decided to poke around, ask a few tech-savvy friends, and investigate other themes before I took the plunge one way or another.

My investigation showed that, unless web designers agreed to an economy in which viable currency included handmade scarves, baked goods, and profuse thanks, I would need to take matters into my own hands, which was a conclusion met with great trepidation. Jen put up with my psychotic, question-filled e-mails, and recommended the following course of action:

1. Upgrade my current site to the newest version of WordPress.
2. Test to make sure things are okay.
3. Set up a subdomain to test out a new theme.
4. Fiddle as I liked, then apply it to the live site.

Hey, I thought, I can handle that! I planned on taking things slowly, biding my time, wading through lots of themes, and soliciting feedback as I went along. I would roll it out for some momentous post or a blogiversary, maybe. I would preserve the old, beloved theme with a screenshot on Flickr. No need to rush, right?

Well, the universe likes to take those intentions and laugh heartily, because last night, I attempted to take care of Step #1. Somewhere along the line, I’m sure I messed up some kind of file transfer, because my theme was completely crazy. After failing to restore it by one means of back-up after another, I made the decision to just go whole hog and set up a new theme. It didn’t make sense to try and rebuild what I had had if I was going to turn around in a matter of months to upgrade. I bemoaned the fact that I had not taken a precautionary screenshot of the site in its mashed-up, non-Internet-Explorer-friendly glory, but I suppose the first version will carry on for posterity. Sigh.

And so, as JG watched a rerun of My Name is Earl, I downloaded the Copyblogger theme and got to work, muttering under my breath. I knew that I was not the only one who had ever had trouble with an upgrade, but I could not believe that I was launching into Steps 2-4 in one evening. What happened to my timeline of a few months, universe?!

JG made me promise not to stay up all night, to be in bed by 10:30, so I begrudgingly pulled myself away at 10:45 after I had compiled a “to fix” list. I tossed and turned until at least 1am, with visions of CSS and sidebar widgets dancing in my head, and I was not sure that I should not have just stayed up and got everything out of my system. Today, after consulting Ross on reformatting title bars and container sizes and wrestling with comment notifications, I am breathless, but done. For the moment.

The new theme is, well, pretty much the same. The biggest visible changes are the navigation menu in lieu of sidebar links, the elimination of ads (like I was making any money on them), and the cute speech bubbles for comments. Because of the last item, I am reverting to my former style of responding to comments via e-mail, because the thought of two voices in one speech bubble is too much for the diehard stickler in me, although I’ll clarify anything relevant right in the comment when it’s helpful. I was giddy when I installed and tested a fun new plug-in that provides a magical, live preview of comment text. I also created two new sidebar sections, so click on over from your feed readers to check out four favorite posts, rotating monthly, and retrospective links.

I still have some fine-tuning to do over the weekend, like sniffing out the places where the original burgundy color scheme may show its face, and the rest of the items on my revised “to fix” list. Since the majority of the changes are more related to infrastructure, they should be invisible, for the most part, depending how much CSS-finagling I attempt without researching it properly. Most of all, I’m happy that I now have programming that is much more sound.

Isn’t it pretty?