I’m migrating to a WordPress.org installation. Please bear with me — and the crappy header graphic — while I fiddle under the bonnet.
The links that used to be on my home page are now on the new about page. I’ve migrated posts and comments from my old blog, Mabblog, and closed comments there. I’ll be using this site to blog from now on.
Recommendations for a better theme, useful plug-ins and the like all welcome. I’d particularly like to be able to write my own HTML header and footer (without using PHP), and to add & improve metadata headers.
Are you having trouble pasting html into the header and foot file ? Thats the first thing I do with my sites, easy peasy lemon squeezey.
No, Mark: I’m quite capable of pasting HTML, but if you do that and then update the theme…
Hey Andy and sorry for only just coming across this post – have made sure I’m subscribed to your blog from now on.
WordPress is getting increasingly complicated and it’s no small commitment these days to running your own install. It’s no trouble for someone like yourself of course, but when I rehosted my site this week I seriously considered going for a hosted solution.
Anyway, I’ve stuck with this default theme on my blog now, and I probably recommend sticking with it. It’s clean and quick to load, and – though I haven’t tested it thoroughly – pretty good accessibility wise. One thing you can do now is to customise the theme by creating a ‘child theme’ – don’t really understand it to be honest but I think it means you can safely upgrade the theme to new versions without losing your changes or breaking anything – a bit like developing plugins rather than hacking core, I guess.
Plugins I would recommend include:
Google XML Sitemaps – http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/
Subscribe to comments – http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/
Super Cache – http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache/
SEO pack – http://semperfiwebdesign.com/ (good for meta tags)
Related posts – http://fairyfish.net/2007/09/12/wordpress-23-related-posts-plugin/
Hope this helps!
Thanks, Dave. There are a few recent posts for you to catch up on! I’ll have a look at the plugins you mention; you can see mine — including the sitemap one — listed on the “About site” page.