WordPress: Third Time’s the Charm

I actually started investigating WordPress when Phaelia moved. Went to WordPress.com, set up an account and created a little test blog. Found it confusing at first, and when I realized I couldn’t edit the templates, I closed my browser and forgot about it.

Went back a month or so, toyed with it a tiny bit more, found out you needed to pay to get access to the templates, shrugged, and forgot about it.

In the meantime, I read a review somewhere which mentionned WordPress.org, as the self-hostable package. So when I started thinking about moving, all the elements finally set themselves into place.

It hasn’t been entirely a rose garden so far. Installing the package was as simple as it gets – FTP it to my host, personalize the config file, then run the installer, and less than 30 seconds later, the blog was up.

Selecting a suitable template was another affair though. The stock distribution only ships with two templates, for more you have to download and install them.

The one I had initially selected was nice enough but didn’t have any support for widgets – basically layout elements you can drop into the sidebar and configure to your liking. I tried to modify the code to add the required support but gave up after a while, and picked the present one, my second choice.

To answer Matticus, the new Altitis won’t become much more festive than what it is now, first and foremost because I cannot claim to have the kind of artistic skills to slap something together akin to your blog, for instance. I have an eye to recognize when something is artfully done, I do however lack the talent to create visually appealing layouts myself. So while this will slowly evolve into something a tad less spartan than what it is at present, don’t expect any striking changes.