moonbug.org

And there was much grief as Dr. Moonbug went and screwed up what was supposed to be a pedestrian WordPress upgrade. In other words: all my original scans (plus my template’s css and graphics) got hosed, although I managed to retrieve some via browser/google cache. Hang on, I’ll get things back in order — including the moonbug template! Goddamnit!

Sigh…

KUR 5.0 has launched. Some notes:

• Layout numbering/versioning is designer narcisism at its finest. I find it funny as hell!
• It took about a week to go from Photoshop comp to finished html/css.
• It took about half an hour to port all of WordPress’s pages to the new layout.
• It took about 4 hours to port all of MovableType generated pages to the new layout.
• There’s about 2000 WP pages, and about 200 MT pages.
• If it wasn’t for MT’s multiple blog feature, i would’ve ported those pages to WP ages ago (articles & discog are still MT powered)
• While the new layout was not yet public, this plugin allowed me to view the new theme when the rest of the world was still looking at the old one (I would like to see MT pull that one off — hah!)
• Nested unordered lists (read: the entire sidebar) are a bitch to handcode, believe you me.
• There is in fact only one new significant graphic element in the layout, namely the FZ-pic. All other elements were recovered from previous themes.
• If not for some hidden div containing invalid counter code all pages would most probably validate as xhtml 1.0 transitional.
• If that makes no sense to you, consider yourself a lucky person (ignorance, bliss, and all that).
• I would not have adopted this new look if Gabriela had not told me she liked it (better).
• This is the last KUR-redesign for quite a while, trust me.
• Although…

Now we’re cookin’!

I just finished upgrading WordPress to its latest 1.5 incarnation. Things went, shall we say, moderately smooth. My old index.php file was causing the trouble which is why you’re currently looking at the default (yet wonderful) Kubrick theme, as authored by Binary Bonsai.

First impressions:

• The themes-based layout-scheme is brilliant as it allows for one-click skinning of the site. It also means you can at all time revert back to a previous layout without the need for any local backups of previous layouts.
• The dashboard: hmmm… too much WP-related advertising for my taste, or at least too much emphasis on it. The “recent news” links could be a lot less obtrusive in my view. I’m sure the upgrade party went great, Matt, but you see I’m more interested in my site’s own stats actually. (And my name is Zeus, but I’ll elaborate on that later!)
• No more easy-peasy markup widgets like “link” or “em” or “strong” etc — at least not when using WP in Safari. I didn’t like them initially, then got into the habit of using them, and just when I did, they remove them again! Sure I could whip up Firefox but that’s not my idea of a good time… :)
• I was hoping for an integrated stats package, as is the case with Dean Allen’s textpattern, but I guess that’ll be a 2.0 feature.
  Edit: couple of hours of surfing and I run across this stats plugin. Heh.
• Note to self: make .htaccess file writable (666) before adding static pages (which is another cool feature by the way). If not, the htaccess file doesn’t get automatically updated when publishing — something that had me puzzled for about half an hour.
• I still don’t get what the “custom fields” are about.
• Then again: I’m stupid.

This of course is only for testing purposes as my main goal is to upgrade the WP-install for Kill Ugly Radio where I don’t have the luxury of the occasional royal fuck-up. We’ll see how that goes…