Moving in: Taking control (Part 4)
As you may have noticed, I had a little bit of a design crisis a few days ago. As a result I’ve decided to go ahead and work on the XHTML and CSS layout of the site first. I have a general ideal of where I’d like to take the markup and layout so I figure I’ll get that done first.
Currently I’m using the famous out-of-the-box Kubrick template. As nice as it is, it isn’t for me. I have very specific requirements that I can’t realize with someone else’s template. For example, I want a fluid grid with horizontal navigation up top and three columns. I also want to be able to put a lot of the content that’s currently in the sidebar into separate, dedicated pages. You can see that I’ve taken the first step by creating the pages. That already required a little WordPress lesson. Oh did I mention I’m learning PHP and WordPress as I go?
Maybe it’s time to clarify my experience (as a little aside). I know the following: HTML, XHTML, CSS, the DOM, JavaScript, XML, XSLT, ASP(VB Script), ASP.NET(C#), some SQL and an assortment of other related technologies which I can’t remember off the top of my head. Unfortunately PHP isn’t one of them, though it soon will be. ;-)
So where was I? Oh yeah, in my upcoming template I’ve cleaned up the auto-discovery feed links (I’m using FeedBurner’s SmartFeed™ to translate feed types on-the-fly) and I’ve moved the navigation links to the upper part of the page. Unfortunately I had to do away with the wp_list_pages() function because it didn’t allow me to place the site’s home link within its generated list (more on this in a future post). So the nav items will be hand coded.
Otherwise, things are going frustratingly slowly but smoothly. I’ll be reporting on my progress periodically as I go. Oh and as for the post slugs, I haven’t quite decided how I want to handle them so in the meanwhile “sorry Mathias.” ;-)