Category: Site Updates

Completed updates for the site.

Here’s the Thing

Some time ago, I hit the point where I just don’t like the theme I’m using any more. In fact, it’s now gone all the way past “don’t like it”. I hate it. H-a-t-e it. I’ve been away from blogging for, you know, years. I have a stack of draft posts I’ve written over that time (some no longer relevant, of course). The main reason I didn’t publish them was, ridiculously, because I don’t like the look of the site. Ewww, can’t put my shiny new words on that thing!

It’s not like it’s difficult to change the theme, either. But using a pre-made theme means it’s not going to be to my exact specifications! Whatever those are. Ugh. So I’ve been meaning to make a new theme, but I haven’t been well enough, and blah blah blah. I may as well just slap a pre-made theme on and deal with it. And if it’s near enough, make a child theme to tweak it. I can’t hate it more than what I’ve got right now, right?

An Actual Knitting Post

No, really!

I haven’t done a lot of knitting (or spinning, and certainly not crochet) lately.  And by lately, I mean… the last 18 months.  Or thereabouts.  But in the last week or two I’ve picked up a couple of projects that’ve been languishing and started work on them again.

First of all there’s a hat for Miss RA.  Whether or not she’ll wear it is another matter.  She doesn’t seem too keen on keeping hats on!  Anyway, this is it so far:Bumpity Bump hat

And the other thing I’ve picked up again are the mittens for Mum’s shoebox project.  I didn’t finish them for last year’s box, so I figure if I do them now then I can be ahead of the curve for this autumn.

Shoebox Mittens 2013

I’ve been thinking I should also get at least one of the jumpers that are laying around in bits finally sewn up.  Yeahhh.  I’ll get right on that.

I fibbed

Well, sort of – I said I would post pictures of the finished shawl today, and I haven’t got around to taking and uploading them yet.  What I do have is a sort-of, half-finished, almost new blog design.  Yeah, I know, but it’ll do for now – there will be many more adjustments to come.  It’s a fork of the Thirty-ten WP child theme.  Pictures by me, some things (like the Rav bars) not working yet.  Maybe tomorrow.

S is for Spinning

I can’t believe it’s come round again already, but the Tour de Fleece starts again on 3rd July.  Which means I shall be spinning along with many many others for the duration of the Tour de France bike race.  I probably won’t be actually watching the race as I spin, because I have other things I want to watch and listen to that interest me more.  I haven’t quite decided what I’m going to be spinning yet, but I think “as much as possible” covers it fairly well.

Happily, I’ve solved the missing post button (and tags and categories areas) problem in the edit screen.  Of course I went and did all the standard things first, like disabling all my plugins.  And then it occurred to me to try changing the screen back to the default 2 column view, instead of the 1 column I had it set on.  Oh look, there were the missing areas.  I’ve now rearranged and reset it back to the way it was, and all is well.  Hoorah!

R is for Reciprocity

IComLeavWeToday is the first day of June’s IComLeavWe, the comment-leaving equivalent of NaBloPoMo.  Well, sort of – the aim is to leave five comments, and return / reply to one, every day during the week of the 21st-28th of the month.  So it’s an equivalent in that it’s a daily goal … thingy.  I know what I mean, anyway.  You can either leave comments on the blogs of the other participants, and/or any other blogs you like, really.  It’s more a self-monitored thing, I suppose, since unless you list all the places you’ve commented back on your own blog, there’s no central record.  Anyway!  The point is, it’s a cool way to find new blogs and meet new people and all – many of the blogs on the list are ones I wouldn’t normally read.  Although I am going to try to make an effort to start leaving comments for the people I do habitually read again.  I’ve been rubbish about it, really.  Perhaps I should have a try at a little double thing – five comments to the IComLeaveWe bloggers, and five to people on my own blogroll.  Could be fun!

In other news, there seems to be a bit of a hitch with this new version of WP… or at least, there is for me.  Something has disappeared some of the sections from the Post page (the one that I’m writing in!), including the all-important Post button!  I can get around it because there’s a draft-save mechanism, and then I can post from the edit screen, but still.  That’s not right!  I may have to disable some plugins and see what happens.

Upgrading

(Or, Non-alphabetical Post The Third)

WordPress 3.0 is out – has been for a couple of days, actually – so I’m going to do the upgrade soon.  Probably not tonight, but most likely tomorrow morning.  I’m glad I hadn’t got too far with the redesign I was working on, in terms of coding, so now I can incorporate anything new to the theme.  I’m not sure if there is anything, but if there is, I might as well include it.  It’s all good practise, after all.

I killed it!

My photo album, that is.  Ooops.  And yes, this time I think it really is gone – I was attempting to set up the new version of it using the NextGEN Gallery plugin within WordPress, and I guess that clashed somehow with the Coppermine script, because it’s all fallen down and the photos themselves won’t even show up as direct links.  They’re definitely physically there on the server, but I’m getting 404s when I try to reach them.  I don’t know why that is (though I have a suspicion).  So strange.

Anyway, that means that pretty much all of the photos on the blog are broken for the time being.  I’m going to try to get that fixed over the next couple of days, but I doubt it’ll happen tonight.  I have a concert to sing in!  But I might be wide awake after that, so I might make a start then after all.  Now, though, I’d better finish getting ready.  Concert blacks, here I come…

Where did the photo album go?

Honestly, I have no idea what’s happened: my photo album section has seemed to vanish off the face of the web.  Only, all the files are still there, the database seems to still be up and running… I’ve tried repairing and restoring back-ups, the whole shebang, but with no luck.  Eh?!  The little plugin that links the album script to WordPress is still working perfectly though.  You just can’t get to the album via its URL.  Not the front end or the admin section.  I wonder if it’s a conflict with a WP plugin, or if I maybe need to upgrade Coppermine?

Or perhaps it’s a sign that I should do what I’ve been considering for a while, and import the whole thing into WordPress.  Makes the template easier, that way.

ETA:  I upgraded Coppermine, and no luck.  But then it occurred to me that the upgrade page had displayed, so it must be something template-related (I hadn’t re-uploaded the template files).  So I put up new versions of those, and oh look – the photo album is back.  I’m still going to change over to using a WP plugin for it sometime soon, though, to make maintenance easier in the long run.

Tadaa: it’s version 4

Version 4 of the site is done at last: all moved over to wordpress, and with a nice springlike design – Sheep in a Field by Nikki Jeske. It feels a little bit like cheating, using a theme by someone else, but I couldn’t resist because look: SHEEEEEEEEP! I have done some tweaking to make it work exactly how I wanted it to, especially since I’m using WP pretty much as a CMS for the whole site.

Anyway, I hope everything is working – please do let me know if you come across something that’s broken!