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In the Hopper

Monday February 21, 2005

Lesson of the Month: Cold medicine does not improve my coding skills.

One of my resolutions for this year was to redesign this site in time for its one-year anniversary. I love the Lemon Dream template that was designed by Yvonne but I decided that after a ll these months, I wanted a change. So I grabbed a notebook an started sketching.

But, while I was playing with different options for the navigation menu, it suddenly occurred to me that I was intensely unhappy with the way this site has been organized. It’s something I’ve always known, but never really thought through. I think I’ve just assumed, somewhere deep in my brain, that I would get used to it and eventually something would click.

This is why I could never be a web designer: I am slow.

So I spent the next few weeks comparing publishing engines until I thought I’d become cross-eyed. I downloaded, I tested, I stared at source code. I made lists. I signed up for accounts at forums and asked the same questions in so many different places, I’m surprised I didn’t get more answers mixed up. I learned more about CVS than I ever cared to know. I even contemplated writing my own scripts. And then, because I am absolutely mad, I even considered doing everything by hand.

And 22 January came and went. Lunar New Year, this year on 9 February, also came and went.

I made my choice, and located an import script. I went back to creating a new design. I made mockups in Photoshop. I wrote a new stylesheet—no tables this time around—and cranked out some basic HTML, and began seeing how things looked in various browsers. I developed a burning hatred for non-compliant browsers, particularly that giant out of Redmond.

And then I got sick. I don’t say the two are related. After all—I’m only a little paranoid. :)

I tried re-coding my templates while on cold medicine. Some people do this all the time. Apparently, I am not one of them. The code was, like, really bad. So bad, in fact, that I deleted all those files on Saturday, emptied out my trash can, and decided to stat fresh.

And then, yesterday, a major upgrade to Textpattern was announced. It should be available next week, and requires some changes in how one writes templates. And… well, I thought about tempting Fate, but the truth is— am her helpless bitch and I know it

At some point next week, this site will go ugly. Links will stop working, entries will probably go missing, texts written in fake Latin will probably appear and disappear at random. But, hopefully, things won’t stay ugly for long, not with (pretty!) the new design.

Since I post so infrequently, and am still spending a lot of my day in bed, I thought you should know.

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