Since the Halloweeny theme is now dated, and since I don’t want to be the internet version of one of those people who leave their decorations up all year, I’m changing themes today, so I’m sorry if you get here in a transition period. It shouldn’t be much longer…
I know I could have just changed the header, but I was getting tired of that theme anyway, and until I’m ready to pony up the bucks for a professional theme then I’ll have to resort to theme jockeying every now and then (usually I get sick of them every three or four months, so it’s probably a good thing I don’t buy my own).
If you liked that post, then try these...
links for 2007-10-17 on October 16th, 2007
Turn Up the Thermostat on November 16th, 2007
DragonCon on August 23rd, 2008
New Computer on November 12th, 2007
Old Turtle on July 16th, 2008
November 4th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Matt–are you running wordpress? If so, did you have to pay extra to have your own domain?
I am looking at getting a more professional blog with my own domain, but thing blogger is too restrictive.
I am looking at building my own site, but that means I gotta go buy one of those “This is How to do it for You Dummy” books.
Any suggestions?
November 4th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
First: Yes, I had to buy my domain name (it’s like $12 per year. Maybe $15, I can’t remember but it’s not much). And once you have your domain (I got mine and my hosting through Yahoo) you just have to activate wordpress, go to your hosting panel and start setting it up. It’s not really very hard (in the old days–like, two years ago–you had to set up your own MySQL database, which was a pain, but no more, that’s all automatic now). The hardest part is finding a theme you like. You can try the wordpress.net theme viewer, there are about 1500 in there, but if you’re like me you’ll want something as close to unique as you can get, so I end up getting one and then doctoring the CSS code until I get it to look the way I want, and sometimes settling for good enough (for instance, the links at right are supposed to be all green. Why some are white I cannot figure out). I also create my own headers, which goes a long way to giving a unique feel to a site.
BUT: If you want a very cool site without all the hassle and without having to spend any money or do any excessive coding, I suggest you go over to http://www.wordpress.com and get a free WP blog. That’s where I have my “Real Men Wear Houndstooth” blog set up. There’s no domain purchase to worry about, the URL for my site is http://houndstooth.wordpress.com, and there’s a lot more built-in features with the wordpress.com blogs, for instance, there are a lot more default themes there than with the shareware version that I use on mattmitchellfiction.com, so you have more to pick from without having to find one and upload all the files to get it to work. The only catch is that there’s less flexibility, you can’t mess with the code unless you purchase the pro package, but for Houndstooth the basic works just fine. I believe you can get a dedicated URL there, too, but the basic one works fine for what I’m using it for, which is just an outlet for my sports fanaticism.
That’s about it for the basics, but I’d be happy to be more detailed if you need more, just let me know. (I think I may see a blog entry on this topic in my immediate future :-)