We’re still struggling through the migration to WordPress, but it’s getting a little better. We bribed some of our friends last night with pizza and beer. I’m pretty sure they would have done it without the bribe, but Jason was really excited for pizza that didn’t come out of the freezer, and going to a friend’s house meant he got to buy something fancier than Miller High Life. Our friend Matt gave us a great WordPress tutorial, so most of the basic stuff is functioning. The “projects” tab at the top of the page isn’t working at the moment, hopefully I will be able to figure out how to make a site index this weekend. The “search blog” and “archives” in the sidebar will have to do for now.
If you don’t know much about blogging (join the club), I’ll try to explain what we’re going through. My husband spelled this out for me in the simplest of terms, he knows that when he starts using words I don’t understand I tune out. Like when goes any further than “car” or “engine”-the moment he says “transmission” or “cylinder”-I’m thinking about paint colors.
The original Ocean Front Shack was on Blogger, a free Google product which is great for beginners. If I had started on WordPress I probably would have quit before I got my first post up. My traffic is steadily increasing, though, so it’s time to move to a format that allows more customization, such as the site index I haven’t figured out how to make yet. On an average day we get about 400 hits, nothing record breaking, but it’s steady and on an upward slant. I’m amazed that so many people are interested in our projects, and more traffic means we need to have hosting. The more people we have on the site, the slower it works (400 isn’t enough to slow it down, but on some crazy days we get closer to 1200, which can make the image loads take a little longer). Through WordPress (which is free) my site is hosted by a separate company (something I pay for, through GoDaddy), which J explained as someone with a huge hard-drive that can store all my stuff and work faster than I ever could.
WordPress allows so much more customization that the web-site options are virtually endless. My site index on Blogger never really worked right, and I paid a programmer to make it, so moving to WordPress should allow things like that to function smoothly. However, the reason things can be so custom is because WordPress is coded in CSS. Prior to blogging I had never seen a piece of computer code in my life. On Blogger I could edit my page in HTML, a far more basic coding process than CSS that didn’t allow nearly as much custom stuff, but did help me learn how to add sections of code here and there. So, even though things can be a lot more custom, I don’t know how to do all of that stuff yet, so I’m learning (slowly). Imagine explaining how to program a VCR to your Grandparents. That’s what me learning CSS is like.
Those are the basics of what we’re doing. It can get a little frustrating, but over the long haul should make a faster and more user friendly blog. Thanks for being patient with us!
