Having dug into the documentation and solved some mysteries regarding the header of the Default theme and the version of code used in the Connections theme, I’ve made a lot of progress with that list of early first steps. Here’s what I’ve now done:
- Edited the templates – single, archive, date, category, and post templates, to make the layout more like I want.
- Made minor changes to the style sheet, will add more as I go along.
- Changed the header image. May have fun with header, logo etc as I go along.
- Got the home page to operate as I want. I have set up a static home page, with some extracts from the blog as teasers and have kept a separate blog.
- Added a little light-hearted stuff to About, could do with some more.
- Set up a template specifically for the Growing a Website category, which shows items in date order (oldest first) rather than reverse date order (newest first).
- Got Search working. The only problem was its use of “old” WordPress code and layout – in fact, removing the “leave this line” at the top of the search template (which must have been historical) got it working.
- Outstanding: my attempt to create a Page which is actually my blog’s front page (see point 4). As Pages in WordPress are completely different beasts to post Archives (that is, any page which contains a collection of posts and therefore requires “The Loop”), I have a feeling that what I am after is not worth the effort. It may remain outstanding for a while….
I’ve done all this using two different themes, so I can learn the workings of two different approaches and change between them when I feel like it.
So, what’s next?
I think the major drive now is to start adding sensible content posts and pages, to build up the content of my website, prior to starting work on some others (based on my recent experience).