TweakPress 2.1 it’s NOT
Other than the excitement of Dave2’s grand finale over at Blogography, it was pretty quiet in my little corner of the blogiverse this weekend. Several of my regular reads didn’t post at all, and most of the others only posted once. Not that I’m criticizing; a look back at the past week shows a higher-than-usual percentage of fluff here on Pseudotherapy, too.
I gave myself this weekend off, turning down all invitations (even a free weekend in Vegas, no lie!) so that I could veg. Since we got home from Juli’s (belated) birthday dinner at Sushi On The Rock Friday night, I haven’t set foot out of this house. Didn’t even get dressed until 2:30 yesterday, and actually managed to sleep till almost 7 a.m. both days. A lazy weekend in one sense, but also highly creative. The family website is damn near done, and I did some tinkering here as well.
My love-hate relationship with WordPress is well-documented. When all is well, WP is a joy to use and a beauty to behold. If you happen to be the kind of person who is satisfied with generic simplicity in the appearance of your blog, it’s brilliant. Everything works intuitively and in its unadulterated state WordPress runs like buttah. The trouble starts with the first tweak. And I always have to tweak. But you can’t just tweak randomly — it’s like delicate surgery. You must carefully feel your way through the network of nerves upon which WordPress functions. One ill-conceived line of code can bring your house of words crashing down. Which is why I tend to rely on plugins — I search till I find one that does what I need, and fervently hope it’s compatible with the others I’m using. Today, three of the four I tried bombed. The one that did work gave me a pretty archives index.
The artist in me abhors sameness. It’s not enough for my blog to showcase my writing, it has to also express my personality through appearance and function. Add to that the fact that I’m an obsessive perfectionist, and you’ve got to be wondering what the holy Hecate I’m doing using WordPress. And I simply reply: The best that I can.
April 29th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Yeah I never could make that jump to WordPress mostly because the functionality of TypePad suits the designery color-whore in me. Also, because I am clearly to dumb to understand it ;).
It’s been hard to post this week….I am so tired of being “on” that I’ve lost my will to talk about real shit, bleh.
April 30th, 2007 at 4:38 am
Most times, I only wind up reading negative things about WordPress. Seems great for those who don’t want to design, but terrible for those who do, like me. I’m sticking where I am.
April 30th, 2007 at 6:26 am
My problem is that I’m cheap. I chose WordPress instead of Typepad because it’s free. But I have to admit I do have moments when I regret my choice!
April 30th, 2007 at 7:13 am
When it works, it’s wonderful. When it doesn’t you have to fight the deep-seated need to smack the snot out of the WP development team.
This is one of the (many) reasons I ultimately went with ExpressionEngine. Yes, it’s not free. But once past the initial cost, I’ve had 90% joy / 10% aggravation - and that, usually when I do something stupid. (Plus I can use the knowledge for developing clients’ projects, then write instructions for them on how to update their site themselves.)
I, too, have been “bleah” - technology overload. I finally got the home network and the KVM switch working, but my computer desk now looks like a minor polyp of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (Twist ties…need twist ties…)
April 30th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
I’ve been noodling with WordPress for a couple of years now, mostly ‘cuz my ISP recommended and installed it for me. I like the way I can putz with 2, 3, even 4 templates at a time… to relieve the boredom. And I don’t mind breakin’ stuff, so there ya go.
April 30th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Muse: Progress! Yep, twist-ties, power squids and those tube thingys you run bunches of cables through so the cats don’t play with them brings order from chaos.
Rick: Hey, thanks for stopping by! Yeah, I played the musical-templates game on my first WordPress blog. Broke shit left and right. Now I stick with customizing Kubrick, and I know just how far I can safely go. There’s much to be said for clean and simple.