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After many weeks of work, (and a months-long hiatus) The Scriptorium is finally redesigned, refreshed, and a new issue is up. I've moved over to a WordPress-based site in the hope that new issues will go together faster, and I will now be able to easily post news items and updates on the News page.
It was not an easy decision to make these changes. I've been publishing The Scriptorium in one format or another for over twelve years now, and it has looked much the same from the outset. I'm sure some readers will not like the new look, but I did try to retain something of the "feel" of the old site. I'm pleased with it and I think it looks fresh and really quite spiffy.
I also found out the best way to make a change like this involving WordPress, if you can do it: make a new folder at the same level as your old content folder, install WordPress in that, and build the entire site in the new folder. When it's ready to launch, all you have to do is get your host to point to the new folder instead of the old one. WordPress is notoriously difficult to move (yes, it can be done, but not easily, trust me) but this way all links stay intact and the way everything works in testing is the way it will continue to work once it goes live.
I have further discovered that HTML coding is now hard-wired into my brain, and I'm sure there's much more HTML on the site than it needs--but when I knew just what bit of code to slip in to make it look the way I wanted, I just went ahead and did it that way, rather than hunting around to see if WordPress had its own way to do it. Perhaps as time goes on I'll cull more of the code, but since no-one sees that part of it but me, it will likely stay. ;)
So that's a huge job done and crossed off the list, and I can turn my attention to the novel revisions. More on that as I move through the process.
It was not an easy decision to make these changes. I've been publishing The Scriptorium in one format or another for over twelve years now, and it has looked much the same from the outset. I'm sure some readers will not like the new look, but I did try to retain something of the "feel" of the old site. I'm pleased with it and I think it looks fresh and really quite spiffy.
I also found out the best way to make a change like this involving WordPress, if you can do it: make a new folder at the same level as your old content folder, install WordPress in that, and build the entire site in the new folder. When it's ready to launch, all you have to do is get your host to point to the new folder instead of the old one. WordPress is notoriously difficult to move (yes, it can be done, but not easily, trust me) but this way all links stay intact and the way everything works in testing is the way it will continue to work once it goes live.
I have further discovered that HTML coding is now hard-wired into my brain, and I'm sure there's much more HTML on the site than it needs--but when I knew just what bit of code to slip in to make it look the way I wanted, I just went ahead and did it that way, rather than hunting around to see if WordPress had its own way to do it. Perhaps as time goes on I'll cull more of the code, but since no-one sees that part of it but me, it will likely stay. ;)
So that's a huge job done and crossed off the list, and I can turn my attention to the novel revisions. More on that as I move through the process.
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