I'm a Switcher
The time is here. I’ve been thinking about making this switch for a few weeks now, and I just made up my mind last week. Along with a graphical cleanup, I’ve made the switch to WordPress. I had, up until now, been using a home-brewed system. I was quite happy with it, and it was doing the job quite well, but now with version 1.5, my need for fiddling is perfectly matched with ease of updates.
The time is here. I’ve been thinking about making this switch for a few weeks now, and I just made up my mind last week. Along with a graphical cleanup, I’ve made the switch to WordPress. I had, up until now, been using a home-brewed system. I was quite happy with it, and it was doing the job quite well, but now with version 1.5, my need for fiddling is perfectly matched with ease of updates.
The WordPress template system seems to be perfect for me. I can completely control the form, function, and presentation of my site, while leaving the core code completely intact. I have made this complete transition without editing any of the WordPress core files. I’m quite impressed. Because I can script PHP directly in the template files, it allows me to use the data I get from the built-in functions and manipulate it as I wish. Combine that with a few select plug-ins, and I’m all set. It was remarkably easy and intuitive. Way to go WordPress team!
So check out the new digs, and let me know if you find any weirdness. I hope you enjoy the new Ordered List.
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Published March 08, 2005 by:
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So far there are 29 comments.
hey, nice new digs!
Being able to add PHP directly to the templates is a great strength WP has over MT. Good to hear it all went fairly smoothly for you.
March 8th, 2005
adam, what are you talking about? I have php written all over my templates using MT…
btw, look the new slickness steve! :)
March 8th, 2005
Aye. Nice work. Just when I had began to lose faith in Steve (I didn’t really like CYMK, like many people I know), he unveils this. Nice new ideas.
March 8th, 2005
Great improvement over cymk. Any plans on making your home-brewed cms available to the public?
March 8th, 2005
Dustin: I’m no PHP guru but as far as I understand it, you have to jump through a few hoops (encode_php) to pass MT generated text as a PHP variable. Instead, I’ve opted to use MTIncludes instead of PHP includes, which means a rebuilds are required.
I’m only just looking into it and it’s a big aside to Steve’s update anyway. If you have any relevant info on this shoot me an email.
March 8th, 2005
Hadn’t thought of him releasing his CMS.. but it would be nice. Open source, or no.
March 8th, 2005
Very sleek and fresh design – much better than the previous one. Congratulations.
March 8th, 2005
Ryan: I’ll release the CMS, but I’ll need to package it up first. I don’t know if it (as a whole) would really be of use to anyone because it’s rather specialized and not that flexible, but if anyone wanted to check out the code and see how I did a few things, I’m more than willing to let them take a look.
Thanks for the kind words everyone. Hopefully now I can start writing again and not focus so much on the coding/designing part of this site… at least for a little while.
March 9th, 2005
I gotta say, I love this design. Its nice, clean and simple.
Kudos on a quality design and layout.
Mark
March 9th, 2005
Zach, from what you’re saying, you have a point about passing mt generated text into a variable.
I was just merely speaking of typing in php into the textarea of the article body or template body.
For instance, if I typed in
<?php echo date('Y'); ?>into the template, I would see “2005” but as far as trying to say<?php $myVar = "?><$MTHeader><?php"; ?>... or however you would write it… that wouldn’t work of course.March 9th, 2005
Hey this design is amazing! Really light fast… and spectacular colors / shapes.
I love it!
March 9th, 2005
Very nice design, love the colors and the whole composition. I am glad that you made the switch, always good to have another WordPress enthusiast.
March 9th, 2005
I dig it! I liked CMYK a bit better I think, but this will do just fine. :)
Nice work!
March 9th, 2005
An absolutely stunning template.
I’ve listed you on my new design worship shrine weblog:
your site on i-marco’s choice
March 9th, 2005
Steve said
I know I’d also like a peek. :)
March 9th, 2005
Love the design and also love WP 1.5. I switched to WP from MT and haven’t looked back. I’ve found WP to be more robust and with version 1.5, making templates couldn’t be easier now.
March 9th, 2005
whoaaa ;-)
this is simply the most beautiful designet wp site i´ve ever seen.
March 9th, 2005
I’d like to see your CMS too Steve as I currently building one! Nice design too.
March 10th, 2005
Wow! Very nice indeed :-)
March 10th, 2005
Another stellar design, sir. Wonderful work as always.
March 10th, 2005
Hi, I think the re-design is ok. I like the colors and the funky inter-crossing design but the Menu looks very amateur. I thought your last design was one of the best around so thats proberly why I don’t like the new design as much as everyone else.
March 10th, 2005
This design is really amazing :-) Congratulations
I esp. like the colour selection and the comment blocks
March 11th, 2005
Well done on the redesign. It shouts confidence ( hot pink) yet it’s so much cleaner than the previous efforts and that ain’t easy. WordPress owe you a fully paid holiday :)
March 11th, 2005
Hm…. This design is much better than the previous one you had around, I think. Congratulations!
March 15th, 2005
I hope you haven’t forgetten about letting us see your CSS :D
March 23rd, 2005
oops! that should be CMS
March 24th, 2005
This is simply the most gorgeous site – of any genre – I have seen in months. Congratulations on a stunningly simple design – I’ve bookmarked you for inspiration (and for the Tiger WP admin, a godsent; I only just started using WP and the admin interface almost turned me off it) – it’s given me further encouragment to redesign my own site :)
Hope to see more from you in future!
September 28th, 2005