Starting up a new tech blog
I’ve been scratching an itch for the past twelve months that is about to be soothed.
Sometime this coming week, I’ll have a new blog ready that will focus wholly on tech content.
It’ll be a place where I can talk about all the things that interest me outside of my primary professional interest in business and communication. Those things are all to do with technology.
In January 2005, I started NevOn Experimental on TypePad. I described it as “The place for trying, testing and talking about new and interesting things.” A pretty broad brush but the focus was on technology.
I migrated the content to a self-hosted Movable Type installation towards the end of that year.
But there was too much else going on at that time and I didn’t continue writing there after April 2006.
Both blogs are still up at the moment, but dormant.
So I’ve always felt a gap, something missing in the things I want to write about that are specifically tech oriented and which don’t really fit into the overall focus of my main blog.
Haven’t yet finally decided the name but it won’t be anything fancy and it won’t be called ‘Experimental.’ Probably. It will run on WordPress.
Coming soon.
So far, so good
So design refreshed NevilleHobson.com is up and running.
Everything went very smoothly, much to my pleasant surprise.
A bit of work to do on the refreshed site with getting everything just so. Most critical things are taken care of, so I can get to others during the coming days.
A good result.
First get a cup of coffee
Feeling quite confident that I’m now in the home stretch as far as getting the design refresh completed is concerned.
Detail to pay attention to now. Things like mapping out sidebar content structure. Sorting out some odd design issues.
Although I’m quite confident that all the plugins I have on the main blog will work fine when I upgrade that blog to WP 2.2.2, I really ought to test them properly here first.
So that’s a a prime task. Once done, I’ll then prepare the main blog for WP upgrade. Full database backup plus downloading a copy of the entire site.
Now where’s that coffee…
Almost ready
Now that I’ve sorted Podpress out, I’m about ready to make the jump to hyperspace, er, install this theme - which I’ve christened ‘NHcom 2.0′ - on the main blog.
Checking all the plugins I have on the main blog to see which have updates. A number of them do. Not always a good thing, if Podpress is any indicator.
The most important plugin, after Akismet, is the one that redirects the RSS feed to a FeedBurner feed. That plugin has evolved a lot from the early version I’m still using. It’s now owned by FeedBurner and no longer requires .htaccess rewrite rules.
But it’s late so I’ll now leave things to rest until tomorrow.
Testing Podpress
Ok, now a test with Podpress version 8.2.
As I include podcasts at least twice a week on the main blog, I want to be sure the latest verison of Podpress works and doesn’t do bad things liike mess up the RSS feed as my experience with version 7.7 indicated.
In this test, I have not fully set up Podpress on this sandbox blog, ie, no iTunes settings. Just want to see if this version of the plugin works well.
So here’s a test podcast.
[Edit] Hmm, the podcast’s there but it says ‘error opening file’ when I click on play. Troubleshoot.
[Edit] According to a thread in the Podpress support forum, this is probably a bug. Suggested workaround is disable stats. Tried that, doesn’t work. Very disappointing. I find Podpress unreliable except for old version 6.8, which is what I’m still using on the main blog. I think I’ll try that version here, although not sure if it works under WP 2.2.2.
[Edit] Fixed. Removed version 8.2, installed version 6.8 - and it now works.
Getting ready
Well, I’m quite pleased with how things have gone so far today with the new main blog design refresh.
Overall presentation and layout look good. All works fine. So far, so good.
Just upgraded the site to WordPress 2.2.2. All the plugins work and all seems ok.
There is one niggling look-and-feel issue with Internet Explorer and Safari for Windows, though.
It’s re the navigation bar and the header image where unwanted white space has crept in between the image and the nav bar.
In Firefox, it’s shown how I want it with no space at all:
But in Internet Explorer 7, large white space:
And in Safari for Windows - a thin line white space:
I can live with it for the time being. Nothing show-stopping and I’m sure I’ll find a fix.
So, press on!
Cracking on
For better or worse, I’ve made my decision to refresh my main blog design with an adaptation of the Suweet 1.0 +Widgets theme created by Michael D. Pollock.
This theme is just about what I’ve been looking for. It has the right combination of simplicity, works with WordPress 2 and upwards, has a clean and fresh layout, with not too many bells and whistles.
Plus the style sheet is one of the easiest to edit that I’ve encountered in an existing WordPress theme.
My goal is to have NevilleHobson.com up and running with the refresh by the end of this weekend.
So armed with my trusty CSS in 10 Minutes book, the Top Style Lite 3.10 CSS editor and a willingness to learn from mistakes (and I’m making lots), now’s the time.
After procrastinating here for months about what to do with the design, let’s just get on with it!
Theme design is a skill
Even though there’s not been much recent activity here, blog design is still very much on my mind.
Further experimenting with themes that catch my eye. Latest is Suweet 1.0 from Solostream. I really like its fresh and clean layout. Full width, too. I think I can customize this one relatively easily.
I asked my Twitter and Facebook friends today for some recommendations on WordPress theme designers. Some great suggestions, still coming in.
Just reading a very good post from a year ago by Chris Pearson on blog design and costs. He’s dead right - theme design is a skill. You’re paying for someone’s expertise and knowledge.
I have no issue with that at all.
Yet I really would like to do this myself.
So press on…
IE7 frustrations
What is it with Internet Explorer 7?
One thing I hear again and again from WordPress theme developers is about the extra steps they have to take in designing a theme to add tweaks and workarounds so that things look as they should do in IE.
Take a look at this graphic. Then look at the ‘Recent Posts’ list you see in the sidebar on the right.
If you’re seeing this page in Internet Explorer 7, it should look the same.
But that’s not how it should look.
If you’re viewing this page in Firefox or Safari, you won’t see the little arrows at the beginning of every heading and every line in the sidebar.
That’s how it should look.
Gotta figure this one out. This is so frustrating.
Banner image and fluid width
Thinking about the banner. This theme is fluid width. That shouldn’t really matter with a banner that’s a solid colour.
What I’d need to do is use the banner at a fixed pixel width and then ensure the page background where the banner would appear is the same colour.
The banner I want to use, though, isn’t a solid colour, as this image shows.
That’s a screenshot of my main blog as it currently looks which I intend to upgrade to WordPress 2.2.1 and then replace the K2 theme it uses with something else.
This SpotLight theme is the most promising candidate right now.
On with the testing.