I bollixed my blog up. Totally banjaxed it I did or at least a good portion of it. I’m so proud of myself I could just spit.
And how did I manage to do this, you ask? By messing about with themes again that’s how. Lost all my widgets in the process too. I got stupid, wasn’t watching what I was doing, didn’t pay attention and all my little text widgets went bye-bye.
Don’t even ask me if I backed up all the bits of html that went into those text widgets either.
Me and this blog of mine have a big problem and that’s the way it looks. I never liked the way it looked. No matter how many times I thought I had the right look, 3 weeks later it was somebody else’s look. Content? Content is the most important thing you say? Well hell, I know that. I just have this thing about the look…I don’t know what it should be.
I was talking to my lady about it tonight as a matter of fact. I laid all my frustrations and rantings out on the table and she promptly swept the whole mess into the trash bin and told me that I’d find out the right way to go about it if I just kept at it. I responded by saying that would only happen if I eliminated all the wrong ways of doing it first…and then the thing would probably just disappear.
Bah!
This obsession with this look thing obviously reflects a problem within myself and I’m sure any brain thumper worth his/her ludicrously high fee would the first to agree with me. I’m sure be more than willing to take all my money to find the root cause of this problem. But since I don’t have any money to speak of I suppose they won’t be beating down my door with their finely manicured hands and offering all sorts of lifetime therapeutic contracts of happy mental health.
In the meantime, I settled on a bunch of coffee beans. At least it might keep me awake long enough to restore all my missing widgets. Cups, sugar and non-dairy creamer are on the table in the back…enjoy.
I use to change the look of my blog about once a month, no joke! Now I can barely get a new post up. I have been working in vain trying to get rid of the little pause when opening in firefox, for months now. The boarder circles the header photo and then disappears just bugs me.
I’ve tried everything but what works. lol
Maybe time for a whole new template. I’ve vowed to fix this one problem before I create a dozen of them. I do believe most don’t even look at my side bar and I mostly have that stuff there for myself, as is likely to be the case for most folks. So I think your blog looks great, don’t sweat the small stuff. Still looking for the man in the coffee beans!
I too hold the way things look to be RIDICULOUSLY important. I too have totally borked my blog because I wanted to either give it a new theme (nice look for people reading it) or upgrade the WP install (nicer look for me using it).
I think I finally learned to back everything up really freaking well first, and then I could screw it up all I wanted and still go back to the old look. If I could remember what it was, anyway.
If I had any extra time right now, I’d suggest you hire me for a redesign.
At least you have the courage to try a change. I have had my design for nearly two years and I am sick of it.
I have messed around in the background, but I always lost my nerve.
Plumber with a leaky faucet = Kirk didn’t backup.
((((stifles laff)))
Sixty – Your day will come.
I’m always messing with my theme too and am ready for a new one. One ABSOLUTE requirement ~~ I must be able to add my own custom header. I like how the sidebar looks with this theme!
janeywan: Your templates are beautiful but Blogger’s a rather horrible resource hog when it comes to viewing them. Tell you what…we’ll get you into your own custom WordPress blog and you continue to create “Premium” Blogger type theme templates. Then you can sell them to Blogger bloggers for a reasonable price while you happily design and blog away using WP. How’s that?
Rachel (welcome back, M’lady): Thanks for the remake offer but unfortunately, I still don’t know what kind of look I want. Probably never will at that so with this change I’ll just force myself to leave it. I’ll probably have a lot more time for writing that way, you think?
Grandad: Now why do I think that your readers pay more attention to your writing then way your site looks? Besides, you can always install the latest full version of XAMPP for Windows, throw a WordPress install into it and viola! You got yourself a nice “sandbox” to play in for all your thememing pleasure (shoulda’ done that myself?).
Sixty: Like Grandad says. Anyway, I should have remembered that the DB isn’t the only thing that has to be backed up (reap what you sow and all that).
Elaine: I checked out Sadish’s two theme sites. He’s giving away two more of his premium themes (this old Coffee Spot theme ain’t a premium anything) that you might be interested in. For myself, I think I need to sit down and do some serious PHP and CSS learnin’ (ah-ha-ha-ha-ha…yeah…right [wipes eyes]).
XAMPP? WAMP, surely? I have been running it for years. That’s where I do all my testing. But I’m still not happy with the designs I come up with
Grandad: XAMPP, WAMP, same difference. The end results are the same. I prefer XAMPP for Windows that’s all (and it’s updated more often than WAMP–whatever). I wouldn’t worry about your design any since it’s pretty obvious that the design is not what your readers come for. At the risk of over inflating your ego, I have to say that you’re a damn fine writer and story teller (senior geek etc, etc) so stick with what you do best…your site looks fine.
Rest of comment put where it belonged. Battin’ a thousand today.