Over the past few weeks, I have worked on redesigning the theme on my website. I wanted something that was more me, and I wanted to move away from the default WordPress theme. The default themes are nice, but I don’t like everyone having the same theme as me. I guess I just want to be different.

This is my first theme that I have ever designed on my own. I use the term designed loosely. I just started changing the way things look in the browser with a general idea of where I wanted to go. For a base, I used the _s theme. It was pretty easy to customize to my liking, and I think that it was great place for me to start. If the WordPress theme team uses it, it is more than good enough for me. I mean they get paid to make themes, and they use it as a starting point. Who am I to think that I could do any better? I know they know WordPress way better than I ever will.

Since responsive web design is a hot topic, I made this theme responsive. It is a simple single break point that goes to 100% width. It works pretty well for me, and I like the fact that it looks cool on my phone now. It is easy to read, and it keeps the full menu. I am not a big fan of menus that turn into drop downs, and I made sure that mine does not do that.

For compatibility with browsers, I have done absolutely no testing. I styled the theme with SASS and Compass, and I like the way that works pretty well. I will definitely be using that going forward. It is nice to not have to worry about vendor-prefixing everything. I will be happy when we can drop a lot of them, and we are getting closer to that time everyday. I use Chrome exclusively so it looks good in that browser. If you see any issues in any other browsers, feel free to Contact Me about them. I will look into them.

If you have any other comments, I will be happy to hear them. I am not a designer by any means, and I know what I have to improve a lot! The next thing that I will be doing is redesigning my wife’s photography site. I know that is going to take a good amount of time, but I am tired of her having to use flash!

-Drew

I took the header image of the site because I can’t find one that I like. I could make one, but that would take a lot of time. I made one a long time ago, but I just don’t want to put that one back up. I actually like the site without it to be honest. I should have done this a long time ago!

In a complete accident today, I deleted the directory for my site, and I lost everything that I had. This prompted me to completely rebuild the server that I am using for this site. It had some things on it that I didn’t like, and this accident was the catalyst to start from the beginning.

Before the accident, I was running NginX as the web server, but I decided to move back to Apache. I like the way that Apache sets up it’s configuration files better, and it makes it easier to install new things. There are not many packages that come built with the NginX rewrite rules that you need, and I don’t like trying to convert them. You can usually Google them, but I am just tired of searching of ways to make it work. With Apache, it more than likely just does. I think that I am going the ease that comes back with Apache.

I have to get back to setting up the other things on the server, but I just thought that I would post about my mistake. It is a good thing that I have some backups of everything. This should be a lesson to everyone, make sure that you have backups of all your sites. Do not count on your provider to keep them for you. It is your fault if something happens and you have nothing to fall back on.

-Drew

It looks as thought the internet speed has improved. The technician came out yesterday, and then placed a new piece of equipment in the garage. It works much better now from the testing that I have done. I still wish that I had a faster internet provider, but it is what it is. They are pretty fairly priced, and they have the best customer service that I have ever dealt with. I don’t think that you can get better than them in that regard.

-Drew

The site is really slow right now. I am working with the ISP to make it better, and they are replacing some equipment to make it work better. From what I understand, they are done, but it does not seem to be any better. I will have to send another email to get it improved.

Bear with me until I can get it improved.

-Drew