I have been using Blogger for a very long time. I signed up for a Pro account long before they were purchased by Google and have over 500 posts logged in the system.
I have been evaluating tools on and off for over a year now, both as part of my work (I was on and off the Blog Project at BCIT) and for this personal site: Alistair.com. Even though I determined that WordPress was the best tool for the job almost a year ago, I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to customize the experience to my satisfaction.
I have embarked on a number of different ideas, only to abandon them during the design phase. In the process, the updates to my site have become less frequent and even less exciting (as if that were possible). I needed to change the site soon, or I would end up letting it rot.
This morning I decided to just install WordPress and go from there. If you are reading this, then I managed to get it installed properly and have published this post. Good. A first step on a long journey.
To start with, I have decided to adopt Ben Gillbanks’ Regulus theme. Most of the procrastination with my site redesign was trying to come up with a design that was:
- usable
- attractive
- semantic
Unfortunately, that was taking a lot of time because I changed my mind a lot. So, by selecting a pre-made theme, it gives me something to launch while I tinker with my own design.
The site needs to be more than just a WordPress theme, so I have a wish-list I have put together (adjust your reality as required):
- Integrate a gallery of some kind for my photography
- Utilize the Excerpt feature for a front page (rather than just using the blog as the front page)
- Continue to refine the page management features of WordPress to suit the various subjects I’d like to add
- Add subjects:
- Web Development
- About the Author
- Photography
- Experiences
- Build up a category list for blog posts
- Integrate with del.icio.us (investigate others)