Now, how is this at all related to all the changes here on the site? Well, if you would just let me type then I will tell you! I was trying to add the Flickr integration to the old design and was running into problems because of the stupid slider that was at the top of the page showing different posts. The slider was cool at first but really wasn’t necessary for a place like this, and it wasn’t just some Flickr plugins that it caused problems with. The thing was becoming a huge pain in the ass and was causing more grief than I needed. Then add to the fact that I was constantly having to go in and manually code a lot of the CSS and PHP files to get them to look the way I wanted and suddenly my easy-to-maintain, plug-and-play site was no longer that. And voila, you are looking at the new layout that resulted! This one is much more plug-and-play for all the same apps that I had before, meaning less work for me to get everything working and setup. I just had to go in and fool around with a couple of core files to get it exactly how I wanted, but most of it really is just plugins now. I also like the cleaner look and feel of the site with less text on the main page – seems like my site keeps getting better and more sophisticated with each reiteration.

Now all that remains is to get all my photos transferred over to Flickr, which is not going to be an overnight process. In order to not have monthly upload limits or image sizes I am going to have to get a Pro account for $25/year, but it will be worth it. In the meantime I am going through my catalog and tidying up my photo collection and slowly getting some sent to Flickr.

This layout is requiring a lot more work on my behalf though; the last one was plug-and-play where I just selected the theme and moved some boxes around. With this layout I am having to do a lot of custom work to remove things I don’t want and to properly add some of the old features, requiring me to get into the actual PHP and CSS coding. Without training or much prior experience there is a steep learning curve and a lot “let’s change this piece of coding to see what it does. nope don’t like that, let’s change it back.” Also, some of the old features have conflicts with some of the new ones and so there have been a couple of functionality changes, but I am working on those. You may notice that there are some things not laid out properly yet, but I will get to them in due time. I think they are all small things now, but if you notice anything big not working properly please let me know ASAP.

I will spend some more time later to go over those realizations, but for now I just want to test out a new plugin that I installed to the site. If all goes well, my Facebook account should update with this blog post as well. I have been fiddling around with the site a bit over the last two days and it has come together nicely. The picture albums are working very well and it is just a matter of updating the site a bit more and keeping it current. If you have any suggestions/complaints then keep them to yourself, this is my site! I gotta jet – the oven is awaiting for some chicken nuggets to be cooked up.

Go chicken nuggets!

Edit: Woohoo! It worked! BTW, the chicken nuggets are a go for launch!

Post-publish edit: It may seem like it took longer than an hour due to the difference in time from the last post to this one, but that is because of me changing the time zone to the one here in the UK.

Let the cursing begin!