I had to re-install WordPress over the weekend after an attempt at fixing an issue with a Share This plugin went horribly wrong. *sheepish grin* Just prior to this attempt I had completely removed the widgets in the pathetically widgetized theme I was using, “hard coded” the sidebar, and finalized the tweaking of the colors and fonts. Naturally, after the reinstall I discovered the problem with the plug in had nothing to do with anything I did… it’s just not completely compatible with WP 2.5. *headdesk*

In the middle of all this I found another interesting theme, which prompts me to ask, “Who the hell are they designing these themes for?” Clearly not for anyone who actually reads them. I was taught that a row of text should be no wider than 60 characters/spaces, for ease in reading. Now I have gone as high as 65-70 without any speed reading accidents and I have read elsewhere that up to 80 characters is fine, but what I’ve been coming across lately significantly exceeds any of these rules. What’s worse is that in order to cram all this word-age into one line they have to make the font so tiny you need a magnifying glass to read it. Where the hell is the logic?

Of course the final straw is when the designers make more work for those of us who wish to make their sites easier to read. The original template I was using may have required me to do some work to make it as pretty as it was meant to be, but it was nothing compared to the aforementioned “interesting” one. In order to change the font size of the entries, which should of had its own class, I had to increase the size of the “body” font, then reduce everything else. After spending hours doing just that I added some widgets, only to find out that only three of the four were showing up. The dumbass designer did (or didn’t do) something to the theme that screws up the ability to have a RSS feed!

Needless to say I’m back with the original, widget-free, blog theme. If anyone wishes to take a look at it, it can be found at http://bishiharem.com

Aside from figuring out how to remove the date from the posts and changing the background color of the blog (which I think may be an image), Maxwell’s writing blog is up and running. Until I’m certain the other themes we’re looking at will work with the upgrade, we’re sticking with a slightly modified Kubrick layout. As a test I copied and pasted Chapter 1 of Links. I discovered that I can change privacy settings per post, and can even password protect them (this will be great for those original stories Max wishes to share just with friends). I’m not going to bother using WordPress’ import option as there are only a few things to move over currently. I also already know that I’m going to have to fight with changes to way the posts look anyway so, yeah.

In other news, TS2 University and Bon Voyage arrived yesterday. Note to self: to avoid drama from boys, get mail before they come home. I’ve never heard so much bitching and whining over Mom treating herself. University has been installed and one teen has already been shipped off. What happens if the parents don’t have any money? 🙁 I guess I’ll figure that out once I get around to playing Sims State. Tomorrow Bon Voyage will get installed. Dear Gods! How does one keep track and rotate through all the places?!

I’m currently working on Max’s “blogroll”. If anyone on my/her flist would like me to link to their fanwork site/archives/blogs, please let me know!

The Bishi Harem Fruitcake Co. online store is no more. I deleted it yesterday. Oddly, this was not as painful as I expected it to be.

Since the muses were on loan to me from Maxwell Pink, I returned them with a thank you in the form of the domain. Yes, from this day forward bishiharem.com will be the permanent home for my alter ego’s fiction archive. It’s not that I don’t trust Blogger, but between all the nonsense that’s been going on in the blogosphere as of late and the fact that I have 2GB of web space collecting dust, I decided to move the archive there for safe keeping.

I’m using WordPress for the archive. I installed it last night and began tweaking it this afternoon with the help of Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s “WordPress for Dummies”. To give you an idea of how dumb *I* can be, when I discovered the announcement of a stable update of WordPress I immediately implemented the upgrade even though Fantastico has no mention of it, yet. I did this partially because I wanted to get any upgrades out of the way before I started working with the software, partially because I know Jen harps about keeping our software up to date to protect everyone on DrakNet and this would make her happy. 🙂 Of course now I’m working with a Dashboard that bears little semblance to the one in the book! Fuck!

Once I figure out where/what everything now is, make the site look pretty, and move, re-tag and upload fics I’ll let everyone know.

Now I’m wondering if I should’ve installed WordPress into its own directory so I could password protect it. *sigh*