Image credit: “Yes, We Are Open” by Matthew Paul Argall is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
After a long (and I mean long) weekend of seemingly endless design refreshes and struggles with figuring out the ‘New Shiny-Shiny’ of WordPress site design (both the ‘old skool’ method and the newest ‘Blocks’ mode), I finally have the new site ready for your viewing.
I have already added a few posts from <the old site> that I wanted to start pulling over (with some updated commentary), and I have plans to move others here as well – just look for the (Repost) at the beginning of the title to see what’s been culled and updated…
In the meantime, let me take you on a little journey of what was tried, and what failed here at SonicWasteland.
This was the original that actually popped up Online sometime Friday (before I figured out there was a ‘Maintenance Mode’ that would let me test without actually publishing…) I was using WP’s Twenty Sixteen Theme here. It’s not all that bad, but it’s just not there. Serious font issues. I could not get the new logo to work (no matter what I tried) leaving me with an old <the old site> Logo being the only thing that actually looked decent at the Masthead. The biggest issue was the design just wouldn’t bend to what I wanted. Again, it’s usable, but I wanted more. And better…
This was Version 2(ish) that got constructed on Saturday. This time using the Twenty Twenty-Three Theme. The Banner was *way* too big and required you to scroll all the way down just to see the posts – every single time, on every single page. For the life of me I could not figure out how to change that (one would think that what ‘Crop’ is for, but not here apparently…) I Installed a new Site-wide font that I liked for about half a day (you can also see it in the above pic in the Sidebar). And poking around to get the auxiliary pages to look remotely usable never quite worked with what I was thinking. By the end of the day I was sick of looking at all of it, and went to bed frustrated and deflated. I can only imagine how much all of you would have hated the design after a time or two here.
After Zooming with QBurns and trying to figure out what the hell I was doing, I went on a mad dash to check out and install Themes. Then I had to port the info over to see if I could get something usable. Above is called Minimal Blogger and while we are certainly getting closer to what I wanted, it’s really (obviously) plain and bland and…boring. This was another one where I couldn’t get my Logo to work and there were a few other issues as well – no doubt caused by all of the $#@! I had installed with all the Themes…
We are well into Sunday morning at this point, and I’m reading WP Help Sites, looking at Design Blogs, and scraping the Tube of Yous to find anything I can take with me on this painful journey. By Sunday afternoon I was ready to give up, trash everything , and just start over once I had digested some usable info on how to make a decent Blogsite.
It was around this point my youngest popped into the back room and said ‘Dad, you need to take a break.’
Out of the mouths of babes…
But he was right. I grabbed a shower, and while deciding whether to immerse myself in hot water for another five minutes or just get out and tackle this damned thing, it hit me: I made this mess. And need to clean it up – however long it takes.
I could see bits and blobs of Brian Eno’s discourses on Surrender in my head, and it just struck me: I have time. I don’t have to get this done right now. Just let it go…
So that’s what I did. I spent a few hours listening to music while finishing a crossword. When I figured out the last word I swear it hit me: I had seen what I was looking for in one of the videos I had watched…but which one? Search History to the rescue here, and once I saw the title I knew it was in there. I finally found it midway through the video, and in a flurry I found myself trashing all kinds of stuff installed by previous Themes and found what I was looking for was pre-Installed all along. Insert facepalm here…
Within a few hours I had the Boilerplate for what you are looking at now. I left a few bugs and irks to wait until today to be addressed.
I can’t tell you what flipped the switch from Insanity to (somewhat) Competency here. Letting go? Taking a break? Letting that info circulate in my head for a while? Who knows… But here we are – finally.
I’ve dealt with some seriously unusable music machinery and software in my day, and have always managed to somehow figure them out. I tell my students that most of life is just Troubleshooting, and once you understand the steps to fix something almost everything else works the same way.
But there is something to just giving in – even for a few moments – to let your own system assimilate the details and point you in the right direction. Breaks are good. Take a nap. Do something else. Make stupid noises.
Welcome to SonicWasteland. Until next time…
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