Slowly, But Surely, We’re Getting There

I sure hope no one’s been making regular trips to the Aerie to see how the renovations are progressing, because sometimes it seems for every step forward, I’m slipping back two!

Right now, my frustration mostly stems from my very, very limited knowledge of php coding, and trying to incorporate changes via the custom_functions.php file in Thesis.

"Out of the box," Thesis comes with a sample file. However, simply adding functions (generally, code pasted from "how-to" sites) seems to break the file, resulting in a completely blank web page. Definitely, NOT a good thing. 

I have figured out a kludge (I think; at least it works for the most part, so far), but I suspect it’s too simple, and will fail me when I try to do anything especially fancy. I started a thread on the Thesis support forums, however, so we’ll see whether some kind soul will take pity on this poor birdie.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in viewing the progress (well, the changes, anyway), I’m documenting them via webshots, using Little Snapper and Ember. You can see the progress so far on this page. I do need to be sure I’m capturing a single-post page, so you can see how the Comments section evolves.

Things to Do

• I’m still not completely happy with the comment styling; it’s better, but not great. Main concern is threaded comments.
• I still want to work on the backgrounds for the post area and the sidebars. I want to use gradients, but I have had thoughts that that may not be the most attractive way to do things; on the other hand, maybe I need to use fancier gradients. I really like the blue bar just below the nav menu and above the content area, and the way I matched the sidebar background to it.
• I want to play around with trying to substitute code within Thesis for some of my plugins, but that’s probably the longest-term item on the list.
• I really need to put in a blogroll or links page; however, I really don’t know yet how I want to do that. Part of the homework Tami gave me will include getting some good ideas for that. 
• Oh yeah…and then there’s the homework assignment I have. I really need to quit putzing around with changing stuff, and go look for what looks good!

*Sigh*

And it appears that something I’ve done with custom_functions.php, while still able to render the site, has mucked up my ability to preview posts from within WordPress. *grumble*