I spent much of today (when I wasn’t managing two short sales that are in the process of being approved by their respective banks, showing a rental property, on a listing presentation, and/or meeting with a landlord that is moving to Dubai on Saturday), working under the covers of the blog. The incomparable Chris Pearson developed the theme Thesis, which this blog has been using since the release of version 1.1 in August. Chris has steadily improved the theme with the releases of versions 1.2, 1.3, and most recently 1.3.1. I haven’t kept up with the theme releases, because quite frankly, when nothing’s broken, I believe you don’t fix it.
Today, for some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to quickly throw Thesis 1.3.1 at the blog. I didn’t have a compelling reason to do so, but rather, it simply seemed like I was falling too far behind. So I did, and completely broke the blog. And not just a little…it was completely down and out. If you attempted to read the blog during parts of today, there’s a good chance you saw nothing. Or an error. Or partial content. If there was a menu bar, and you tried to navigate around, that probably didn’t yield any success either.
The problem stemmed from how I customized the theme under version 1.1. In that version, I had made a number of significant changes to the core theme files. And then Chris decided that changing the core theme files was a bad thing, so in 1.2, Chris implemented a way to separate customizations out of the theme files, so that anyone can easily upgrade the theme in the future, without breaking the customizations. Great stuff by Chris, but dang, did that mean I had to relearn, rethink, and redo every customization I had incorporated to the blog. It’s the little things, like the header image, the location of the menu bar, the search area, the avatar-style byline, the footer notes, the related posts, the MLS search page, etc. Minor things like that, which help make this blog feel like home to me.
Fortunately, I possess a few technical skills along with the guidance in the Thesis support forums that led me piece to the correct way to customize Thesis in version 1.3.1. That said, if you now notice anything that is odd, or looks broken, or lost, please, please, please, leave a comment, so I can set it right. This was honestly far more difficult an upgrade than I had budgeted for, and something in hindsight I wish I had done in my sandbox, rather than on the live blog. I mean, that’s why I have a sandbox after all, right?
Along the way, I also took the time (maybe 30 seconds) to upgrade Wordpress to version 2.6.3. Long ago, I started using the Subversion checkout process for all of my blogs, and if that process is available to any of my fellow Wordpress blog owners, let me say it is by far the easiest way to upgrade your blog. It’s not push button easy like upgrading plug-ins is today, but it’s the next closest thing.
Photo Credit: Paul Worthington on Flickr
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
My thanks to Dru Bloomfield for noticing that the anti-spam comment plug-in wasn’t working. Hopefully that is now fixed.