I finally got around to changing the site layout. I’m not particularly certain about it, but the change feels good.
I have a bunch of other ideas floating around in my mind regarding further changes to the layout, although the chances of any of it coming to fruition is, admittedly, slim. It was a pain just trying to make the little edits I did to this layout – my HTML/CSS knowledge is stuck somewhere around 2006 and my PHP knowledge is non-existent – though having experience in C/C++ means I can just about analyse and edit existing PHP to do what I want. Its a little frustrating trying to translate the images in my mind to the screen. I remember how much I used to enjoy this challenge though. I used to love coding when it came to my web site. When I thought about going on to learn programming as part of my degree I was actually quite excited. I even contemplated going into robotics and mechatronics! Thank goodness I stuck to electrical and electronic engineering. My degree killed any spark of interest in coding I had. I realised just how hard it was, and just how terrible I was at it, and it frustrated me, it still frustrates me. It feels like something an engineer should be able to do. I should be able to handle programming but I’ve never been able to wrap my head around it. I can’t even handle MATLAB, and that’s definitely something pretty much every engineering graduate can do these days.
So staring at those lines of code in my theme, not quite being able to grasp it, just triggers those feelings of inadequacy and frustration. I should learn how to be content with using themes as is, but then it would be pointless having my site self-hosted wouldn’t it? And it wouldn’t…feel right. I want to make my site mine in some way.
Oh and I’ve also just discovered WordPress has a full screen writing view. How great is it? I really like the new color schemes for the dashboard too. Finally WordPress is becoming a bit sleeker and less cluttered. Its a much nicer writing environment than it was.