I’ve had a very productive last couple of weekends when it comes to websites.
I built a website for my dad back in 2002, mycarinsuranceguide.net, and I have to say it was pretty meager even for it’s time. Hey, I had only just begun making websites, and it was about all I could handle. A couple years later I took another crack at the thing, but mostly just improved the backend structure, leaving the same horrible colors in place. Well, enough is enough. I tore down everything I had built, and in its place erected a WordPress-powered site. It’s cleaner and more robust than ever. The theme still needs a lot more work, as could the featured images, but it’s an excellent start.
I also turned some attention to my media blog. I installed a new theme and tweaked it until I got it just right. Now all it needs is content! I need to go on a writing spree to kick things off.
Finally, I worked on my site a bit too. I added a bio page to replace the about page I took down some years ago, and changed a few things in the code here and there. To troubleshoot the suicide-inducing load times, I wiped out WordPress and installed a brand new copy. I’m pleased to say that it all went really smoothly, which I credit to the effort I put into being extremely careful and methodical. No data lost, no unexpected hiccups. Site load times seem to have improved (at least I’m not getting any error 500’s), but I’ll keep monitoring. If it doesn’t seem a lot snappier, I may just have to kick my host until they move me to another server.
Take a look at what I’ve done!
- Trashed all existing HTML, rebuilt as a WordPress-powered site
- Customized theme (colors, fonts, widgets, menu, background)
Don’t Let The Media Kill Your Dreams
- Installed a new theme, customized (colors mostly, widgets)
- Added About page
- Added a Bio page
- Increased SEO
- Backed up WordPress DB
- Completely uninstalled, then reinstalled WordPress
- Picked out new theme for blog, customized (colors, fonts)
- Cleaned up files on server