New Blog Smell? 2013 Called, Wanted Its Theme Back

Apr 30, 2017 | Technical & How-To

Trivia question for you: Why is my blog’s URL http://jahangiri.us/2013?

Click for Answer

That was the last time my blog crashed and burned, unrecoverably. I wasn’t feeling very creative, and thought I’d rebuild the blog, move it somewhere else, or start a new one each year. 2014, 2015, 2016 rolled by. 2017 is half over. Looks like 2013 stuck. It’s been that way so long, now, there’s no point in changing it!

Meanwhile, WordPress has undergone many updates, big and small. Readers visiting this site on mobile devices have increased 524.5%. No matter how much I liked my old theme, that was a clear signal that it was time to change – to be more responsive to the needs of readers.

Not to kowtow to Google and it’s mobile-friendly demands; I’ve never cared about bots’ ability to read. Just yours.

It’ll take us a while to get used to this, you and I, but I think it’ll be fine. I may be tweaking things here and there over the next few weeks – who am I kidding, I was still “tweaking” the old one, four years after installing it. But at least I’m past the urge to tear it all down and start over with Elegant Themes’ Divi. I was up to my eyeballs in a redesign, and had just started to get the hang of Divi, when I realized that if you turn it off – even temporarily – your posts may vanish. Forever. Then I started asking questions, and articles like these were enough to convince me it was time to invest in a responsive, but traditional, WordPress theme.

Anyway, it was an awful lot of work, building a whole new site with Divi, and I wanted something that could be accomplished in a weekend, without making my whole site look like something the cat coughed up. One of these days, I may even change my blog’s URL, but for now, you can get to it just by visiting the top level domain: http://jahangiri.us.

Let me know what you think of the new look. If you hate it, give me a week; I’m not ready to hear it.

Holly Jahangiri

Holly Jahangiri is the author of Trockle, illustrated by Jordan Vinyard; A Puppy, Not a Guppy, illustrated by Ryan Shaw; and the newest release: A New Leaf for Lyle, illustrated by Carrie Salazar. She draws inspiration from her family, from her own childhood adventures (some of which only happened in her overactive imagination), and from readers both young and young-at-heart. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, J.J., whose love and encouragement make writing books twice the fun.

9 Comments

  1. Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt

    I have a blog I don’t touch, and a blog/site for my book which I haven’t had time to do much to because of illness, and the combination is already too much for the present me. Which is too bad, becaus 1980s me would have had a ball with the tools, and had the best something on the block.

    I used to do programming as a matter of course, like printing or typing letters. Now it’s a choice: and programming rarely gets the nod. Using TextWrangler to fix a tiny HTML problem for my book was the extent of the programming I had done in YEARS. Scrivener is a tool, not a program in the programming sense – and I did master that – but it doesn’t compute anything.

    Unless there is a new brain and body being delivered soon, and hooked up immediately, that’s the way it’s going to stay – the neurons are busy.

    Play all you want, but, IIRC, the WordPress themes and sites make it easy to check your layout for mobile – or come already set up for that – and that’s fine with me for now. Sometimes I get wistful at the pretties, but most of the time it’s the hassles that deter me, and I’m not using anything to the fullest now, anyway.

    Enjoy!

    Reply
    • HollyJahangiri

      What you’re seeing right now is a fairly untweaked (just configured) premium version of the free “Catch Responsive” theme via WordPress. I liked the look of it; as time permits, I may play with it a bit, but it’s pretty good right out of the box.

      Reply
  2. Debbie D.

    Nicely done, Holly. I know how difficult it is to redesign a website, having gone through it last September. Took me a whole month to get it right! One minor quibble, and it could be confined to my end, is that it’s loading sluggishly. Enjoy your tweaking! 🙂

    Reply
    • HollyJahangiri

      Yes, I noticed that, too! But I think it’s the ISP. The test site was loading sluggishly, too. Not sure what’s up with that – I was hoping it was the weather and a slow connection. Thanks for letting me know! (Technically, this one should be more lightweight – and there are fewer plug-ins. I have no idea what’s up with that, but there has also been an unusual uptick in traffic today.)

      Reply
    • HollyJahangiri

      Check it out again, Debbie, and let me know if I’ve managed to speed things up for you a bit!

      Reply
      • Debbie D.

        Much better now!

        It didn’t like my short comment. Sorry, didn’t mean to be ‘terse’. 🙂
        “You have not typed enough words in the comment. Please go back and add some more. “Concise” is good; “terse” is frowned upon.”

        That’s one of the CommentLuv features, as I recall. Andy has stopped updating the plugin and it’s been buggy for me, so I removed it. Glad it’s still working well for you!

        Reply
        • HollyJahangiri

          Yes, I’m sad and wish he’d turn it over to a developer to keep it going, if he can’t or doesn’t want to.

          Reply
  3. Mitch Mitchell

    I have to admit this threw me off when I first got here because I was so used to your other header. Also, I guess I had this enlarged to a point where I wasn’t seeing any sidebars until I reduced the size. It’s going to be intriguing to see what it looks like when you’re done… whenever that may be. 🙂

    Reply
    • HollyJahangiri

      🙂 Yes, it’s larger on the PC monitor than the old one was, I think. I keep reducing it to about 75%, though at 100% it should make for very comfortable reading! LOL

      Reply

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