Since August of 2010, I used a very generic WordPress template for the start of the blog. It is quite a common theme used by people who use WordPress. For the longest time, I was very unhappy about it because I knew the blog could look so much better!
After searching online for different themes, I found one that worked with the branding of Foodology. I was super happy and it only cost about $35. I’d rather send the money buying a premium template rather than spending the mind numbing pain to code it. Time VS Money…. I have a full time job and part time school, so sacrifices needed to be made.
Even though the theme was already made, I could not just activate the theme and have it automatically work. The formatting was all messed up, certain things were not in the right place, and so many many issues. Even the documentation was not clear enough to help resolve the problems.
Since this was reading break I had the time to try to figure out how to piece this site together.
One 13″ MacBook did not do the trick, so two 13″ Macbooks needed to be used to check what I was doing.
Some of you may have seen the Under Construction page that I had to put up during this week in the evening time. I really didn’t want visitors to see the website while I was editing it. Some of you may know you can’t edit WordPress offline. If I made any mistakes, you’d probably see me editing around.
After the late nights staying up, it all paid off! I tried to minimize the down time of the site so people could see the reviews during the day. By doing so, this meant less sleep and BIGGER eye bags! Woot!
I really hope you all enjoy the new layout! I did it for all the loyal visitors of Foodology, so please visit often and let me know what you think about the layout!
3 Comments
Hi Diana (Good to know a real name):
Nice layout and while WP frowns upon premium templates, for me too, the free ones are poorly designed and does not give you the flexibility or look that you want.
Anyway, just a point I just noticed. I see that you had the permalinks settings set to default. If you research it, I think it be better to change that to prettier ones which will be better optimized for SEO. Just a thought.
Also, the avatar picture of commenters? Perhaps you want to consider setting this up too?
One last thing, if I may, installing the Subscribe to Comments plugin may help your followers follow the comments left on posts.
My two cents. 🙂 Love your template.
Ben
Great job! Thanks for all your hard work, it paid off! Sorry to hear about your eye bags though! 🙂
The new layout looks fantastic!!!!! Clean and sophisticated. You ARE the DesignGirl… haha…
LCG