Deborah Woehr

One of my top goals when I returned from my vacation was to crack open this book and take a shot at building my first WordPress theme. I tried to follow the author’s step-by-step instructions but got totally confused and frustrated. This section is not for the complete WordPress novice, especially if they don’t know a lick of php or css. I know the difference, although I’m far from a whiz. Hence, why I bought this book.

In one portion of the exercise, the author blended the css code in the middle of the php code. If you’ve worked with WordPress files, you know that style.css and .php files are separate. I spent at least four hours the Sunday before last, trying to get the code in order and functioning properly. In the end, I set the book down and haven’t touched it since. I’d recommend this book for beginner bloggers because Hayder does cover the blogosphere as a whole. For theme design, fugeddaboudit. Look elsewhere.

Out of frustration last week, I took the files from this theme, uploaded them onto a test file on my server and knocked the hell out of them to see if I could produce a traditional website interface from WordPress. I stopped when the theme started to break and didn’t touch it until today. For some reason, luck was with me today because I got the skeleton of my husband’s website up, along with a Contact and a map page. Step two in this project involves learning how to write exceptional web copy that will draw in some more business. That’s for a later post.

Right now, I’ll put up my feet and celebrate this small victory.