Warning: Shack Strangeness All Weekend
Sunday Update: Most of what I had expected to do is done now, thanks to Andrew Riley and Duane Lester. Duane and I were talking and I mentioned my woes. He whistled up Andrew, who just did some great work at his site, and, literally within five minutes of that conversation, Andrew was on my phone offering to “take a look” at the various problems that were plaguing me like I was Yul Brenner refusing to let Charlton Heston’s people go.
Andrew did in two hours what it would have taken me two days to do. He is, officially, The Man.
There are a few things that still remain to do and I’ll be taking care of them as time permits during the next couple of weeks.
The original post and updates are below the jump, if you’re interested in the Chronicles of Jimmie’s Frustration.
This is a warning!
Over the weekend, The Shack is likely to look different. I’m going to be rolling out a new template and will be tweaking it to suit my purposes on Saturday and Sunday (mostly Sunday). I should have any major bugs squashed by Monday morning, but I expect to have to make small changes here and there for a week or so.
I really don’t know how to fiddle with a template offline in a way that I can see the changes after I’ve made them (Well, there are a couple ways I could do it, but they cost money I do not have), so doing it live will have to suffice. I apologize for any strangeness you might see.
I think you’ll like the way it looks when I’m done with it. I’ve gotten a few comments about the color scheme and a couple other things I simply don’t know how to change in this template. I do know how to change them in other templates (I believe), so that’s my direction.
If you have any comments during or after the weekend about how things look or work, let me know here. I’ll update this post as the situation warrants.
UPDATE: Here we go.
As it stands, the wooden wall won’t make the cut to the new blog. I kind of like it, but the entire theme is a bit too dark and brown. I am told (and have done a bit of research to back it up) that brown isn’t a great main color for a blog.
Right now, it looks like the new theme will roll out in two phases. Phase One will be this weekend, with the new theme and as many changes as I know to make. Phase Two should happen over the course of a couple or three week. I’ll be adding a couple things (an ad box in the upper left and a featured post in the main body) I don’t quite know how to do. I have someone who’ll do them for me, for a price. The price is the stickler, because I don’t really know if I can afford to sink more money into the blog at this time. We’ll have to see how that goes.
I will also be culling the blogroll rather mercilessly. There are a lot of blogs there I don’t read often, and if I don’t read them, no matter how good they may be, how can I really recommend them to you?
UPDATE 2: Well, that’s likely to be it for the day. I’d like to change the graphic in the header but, despite following the theme author’s instructions to the letter, I can not get the theme to accept the graphic I’ve created. I may end up being stuck with what I consider to be truly ugly beach pictures instead of the nice store I want to use.
Frustrated? Oh, just a little bit.
UPDATE 3: Alrighty, then! Here’s what I have left to do. Some I’ll be able to do tomorrow. Some will have to wait until I can engage a real designer.
1) Fix the header so that it shows the image I want.
2) Space the sidebar sections so they don’t look quite so cramped.
3) Create a “Links” page so I can get most of the links out of the sidebar.
4) Create an archive page that actually works.
5) Remove the category tabs from the header.
6) Get new Amazon links for the sidebar that match the theme.
7) Build a section to go above the sidebar to hold a few 125×125 advertisements to sites I like (or ones that want to advertise here).
Other Posts of Interest:
No orange, please. I have a deep-seated aversion to Tennessee orange.
Hee.
I'm looking at green as a base. What do you think?
Okay, for the record, I like the color scheme now…and the wooden wall in the back.
I just have one suggestion – if it is even possible to change in the template. The number of posts with comments on the right….just seems like there's not enough and sometimes it is hard to follow up with a conversation because it has dropped off the list & I don't even know if anyone else commented on it. Does that make sense? Or maybe if you have a page where you can see all the active topics say, in the last 2 days?
I like green. I really like green. After all my little blog is Dagobah green, sorta. But my template is a stock WordPress one (free!) and I have neither the time nor the brains to change it.
I do agree with Cheesestick about the wood slat background. Give its a 'shacky' feel, even though it kinda looks like redwood. If you want a bleached-out Georgia peach stand look, you might want to gray the wood a bit. However, I would be very sad if you changed it into Jimmie's Candy Shack/Vegas Wedding Chapel.
Only problem I have with the format is that sometimes I'm on a slow connection; the wooden wall loads first, then the text, then the regular background. When the text is against the wooden wall (and often I'm looking at that for ten or fifteen seconds), I can't read it. You don't expect me to just sit around with nothing to read for fifteen seconds, do you?
It is so light and fluffy – I like it!
Light and fluffy. Wonderful…
Skye made me LOL. It is a bit….pale. Mire green accents, perhaps? Just don't cull me from the blogroll… please… mahhhhhster
More, not mire. Jeezzz stupid keyboard.
[...] “I should have any major bugs squashed by Monday morning.” But it’s those little bitty ones that are really hard to catch. [...]
I told you the guy knew what he was doing!
He really does! I'm hesitant to ask him for more, after all he's done, but I may end up doing just that. Thank you for interceding for me.
It's a well known fact that I'm awesome. Don't hesitate to ask me for more help. If I'm able and have time I'm glad to do it.
Looks nice Jimmie! Love the top of the page.
Only possible change I can think of- more contrast/color seperation between the white sections and the colored sections of the blog. Little hard to tell the difference between the two, but that just might be my monitor.
Very nice..
A definite leap forward in sundryhood, and also noticeably shackier.
Love the picture of THE Sundries Shack–nice touch. Also the site is much easier to read after a long day of screen reading. Its easy on the eyes, like Christina Hendricks.
Thank you Bob (and everyone!). The store in the photo is a real place. I'm going to write just a little bit about it in my "about" page later in the week. That's one of the revisions I need to make.