Notice some changes around here? If you haven’t, you’re not paying very close attention. Why the changes? Read on, friends.

Welcome to Phase 3 (or is it Phase 2?) of Del Boca Vista, errr. the development of TBB.1 To quickly refresh, over a year ago I took full control of the blog, moving it off of a hosted service to a domain and server space that I owned. I also dumped the easy blogging platforms2 for WordPress, which offers me more control over the granular details of the blog.

The plan for Phase 3 (or 2) was to learn some HTML so I could build my own theme for the blog, from top-to-bottom. I purchased an HTML/CSS3 book in February of 2009. I quickly got through 3-4 chapters. Then I didn’t open it for months. Fortunately, I found an fantastic theme that I installed and have been using ever since.

About a month ago, I restarted Phase 3(2). I began working through the HTML book. I started digging into the code of the theme I had installed, as well as others, to try to figure out how WordPress works. I kept with the book this time, and finished it off last week. I wouldn’t call myself an HTML master, but I now know more than most people; just enough to cause problems if I’m not careful.

Turns out WordPress is a little harder to figure out than just learning HTML and CSS. There’s a whole other coding language that is involved, PHP. There are ways around learning exactly how PHP works, if you carefully follow various tutorials. But I find it difficult to dig through code if I have no idea what it means.

I have a book about PHP basics on my desk that I’m going to work through, but I don’t know how much it is going to tell me about the guts of WordPress.

So, for the time being, I’ve installed another theme. I loved the previous theme, but found it difficult to hack and tweak, at least with my current code skill level. I like the look of the new one, and if nothing else, it’s a nice change after over a year. I’ve already made some minor changes and hope to keep digging and find some more adjustments I can make to put my stamp on it even more. Don’t be surprised to find new things or slight adjustments each time you visit.

The long-term goal is still to build my own theme at some point, but it’s a more involved and lengthy process that I expected.

  1. Has it been too long, or do most of my readers still get the Del Boca Vista reference? ↩
  2. I’ve been through Blogger, Typepad, and WordPress.org. ↩
  3. HTML and CSS are the main pillars of current website design. HTML builds the structure, CSS adds the presentation and style details. But you knew that already. ↩