Rebecca ChapmanWeb Development | Rebecca Chapman

Site Changes

rebecca — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 22:30:13 +0000

As promised in some earlier posts, I am starting to make a few changes to this site. You may have noticed that things are looking a little bit different around here, and there will be more changes to come. I’m currently playing with a very customizable WordPress theme by Headway and am enjoying it very much so far. Though I know a good bit about coding a website from scratch, this theme allows much of the same customization, but potentially without the need to spend as much time tweaking code or installing and maintaining zillions of plugins. I’ve just installed the theme on this site and will see how it goes as I continue to work with it. One thing I love about WordPress is that it is very easy to switch themes if an existing one just doesn’t work out, but a site’s all-important content still remains untouched.

Redesign planning

rebecca — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:50:07 +0000

As I mentioned in my earlier, paranoid post about the storms (survived them), I’m planning to revamp the design of my site. I have no idea when it will be done, but I’ve been working this evening on making a very rough mock-up in Paint Shop Pro X, a version that came out a million years ago not long after Jasc Software was bought out by Corel. As imaging software, Paint Shop Pro has really gone downhill a lot since that happened, so I never bothered with any further upgrades.

In the past, when it was still under Jasc, it really looked like it would give Photoshop some real competition, except that the price was $99 as opposed to $499. (Don’t hold me to these exact numbers…I’m just making a comparison.) But then after Corel came along, Paint Shop Pro gained vector capability (which was cool), but then has turned more and more into a package dedicated to editing and touching up photos. Not that there’s anything wrong with that direction (I guess), but my interest in it declined as I was interested in a lot of other graphics capabilities besides photos and I didn’t believe that the new upgrades were adding any more real value to what I already had with my current version.

Eventually, I’ll probably need to break down and just get Photoshop and be done with it. I looked into using GIMP, but it seems to be lacking the layering features I use all the time. Graphic design is not one of my strong points, so the last thing I really want is to have to struggle trying to use features that are only halfway implemented for what I do use. I may look into Fireworks as well.

But for now, I’m just going to continue using what I’m using until I run into something that I just can’t do without upgrading to something else.

Web Dev for Weekend Relaxation

rebecca — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 22:34:45 +0000

Now that I’ve calmed down from “annoying neighbor syndrome,” I’ve been immersing myself in website development stuff today. I’ve been playing around with this WordPress theme framework called Headway, and created a computer RPG gaming website so that I could play around with it…and also talk non-stop about games and game-related issues without scaring away non-gamers.

For those who are interested in checking it out, it’s over at www.agirlirl.com.

I’m also working on a blogging website, but I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to use Headway or develop my own theme for it. I have a book on order called Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes that goes into detail about creating child themes based on the open source Thematic theme, so I may pick up something new from that that I’d like to use for the new site. I did develop the theme for rebeccachapman.org from scratch, but it’s lacking some of the features that came out with later versions of WordPress, so I’ll probably end up revamping it again at some point to take advantage of those features and make it a bit less clunky to work with when editing.

In any case, I’ve got a bunch of ideas for everything!