Sorry for the mess
I know everything’s a bit wonky in here right now. I’ve been waffling about some much needed changes for some site and I seem to keep thinking that a different skin will fix some of the problems, but it doesn’t really, so here’s roughly what’s going on.
- I need to completely change the way this domain in utilized. I’d intended it to be a showcase of all my works and ended up, well, just blogging. This might mean that theweejenny.net will need to become a single page with links to everything else (blog, web store, portfolio, etc) in order to properly facilitate everything I want to do.
- I’ve thought of a very simple way I can use a WordPress installation to run my jewellery store, but I don’t know if I like the idea of having to use several installs of the same site software to run what should really be just one website.
- I’ve got a couple more domains that I really want to use for different things, so that probably means that a few smaller sites linked together “as one” would make a certain kind of sense if I did it just right.
- I’m FINALLY learning how to create WordPress themes from scratch.
As you can see, that’s a lot to slog through, and that doesn’t count a certain project that I’d promised I’d do for someone that I still haven’t finished. (I feel awful about this by the way, it’s a somewhat informal commission but I nonetheless take it seriously and really want to do a good job on it, which is part of why I’m learning to code a theme properly on my own).
I’m pretty sure I can do this without disrupting the news feed, even if I have to change the blog url, so those of you reading posts that way shouldn’t have to worry. If for any reason the feed address needs to change I’ll do everything I can to make that an easy transition for you all.
The thing that’s pushing all this to the fore for me is that I’ve been getting some more feedback from a couple of folks who came to the site wanting to know how to buy jewellery from me, and their impression was (in a nutshell) confusing difficult. I absolutely agree with this. If this is the web address I’m giving people who ask how to buy from me then there needs to be something on the front page that clearly conveys the important info.
I don’t know when I’ll be doing what, but there won’t be a lot of posting here until I get it sorted, (less to organize later). I’ve disabled the forum for now, and I’ll be removing the nav link to it after I finish this post. I have to figure out how it fits into the scheme of things, if at all. I’d intended for it to be a place to post tutorials and provide support, but I’m not sure if it’s the best way to do that anymore. I wanted it to be easy to post questions on each tutorial so that it and any further help would all be available in one place, but you can pretty much do that in a regular site post, so I’m going to rethink it a bit.
Thanks in advance for everybody’s patience. If you have any helpful suggestions or advice don’t hesitate to hit the Contact link above. Cheers.
It’s hard to get many sites going at once and there’s always so many options. At one point I owned like six domains and I finally just realized I was never going to get around to some of these things. I wound up giving away Digital Devil Database, which was my most successful site, but also the most frustrating.
Consolidating all of these things seems like a good idea. I know what you mean about WP and the multiple installs concept… It makes me wonder if you might be better off with a more robust CMS platform. I haven’t worked with any of them beyond a casual level, but there’s stuff like Joomla that might be what you want.
Actually, I ran a phpnuke based site a few years ago, and migrated to using WordPress for site afterwards. If I were to move to a more robust CMS (which I’ve totally been considering) I think it would be Drupal. It’s got a bit of a learning curve but but I like how much functionality is simply included without the need for lots of addons. Joomla is nice too (and looks fairly easy to learn from the little time I’ve spent playing with it) but I keep hearing randomly that there are some security issues with it, though those could be unsubstantiated.
The other problem holding me back from just switching to a more complicated CMS, is they’re much harder to skin, and I’ve only just started learning the right way to do skins for WordPress (rather than building on existings ones like I usually do). It’s also sometimes harder to find free themes than it is for WordPress, so I’d be stuck with something really really generic until I was able to code my own.
It’s a conundrum.
There’s also Movable Type, which will allow several blogs per installation… but its dynamic publishing mode has always been horribly iffy for me. It’s standard static publishing mode has its benefits, but it can also be pretty slow for obvious reasons.
You’ll figure it out I’m sure
Ooh, I hadn’t thought of Movable Type, I keep forgetting there’s a free version again. I wanted to try it a few years ago but couldn’t install it at the host I had, I think that’s how I ended up trying WordPress initially.
Since you know a quite a bit more about some of this stuff than I do (I’m presuming you do anyway, you do web stuff in your work right?) would you mind if I asked you for some advice sometime? I’m seriously thinking about either switching to another CMS or somehow incorporating another one. Maybe once I have an outline of what I’ll need to be doing?
I don’t know what advice I’ll need exactly, but a second opinion couldn’t hurt. Jame’s expertise stops at some basic html tags unfortunately. ^_^