The Blog Gets a Makeover

by Islander1988

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Posted on 2015-10-20 at 9:22 PM

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Work has continued on the website with new things being added, the latest update being a makeover for this blog section. The original layout I coded wasn't very stylish or functional, so I looked at options for off-the-shelf blog systems I could plug into the site. I didn't want a bloated Wordpress site that did things I didn't understand and needed security updates so Ilooked at other options for self-hosted blogs. One in particular looked like it might work; the problem was how to theme it so it looked like the rest of the site and worked in a similar way, since I didn't want the blog to stand alone as a seperate section.

I finally decided to just do it myself again, but nicer this time. Using blog homepage and post templates from startbootstrap.com as a starting point, I pulled them into my theme and wrote my own back end. There aren't as many bells & whistles right now as on many blogs but I'll try to add some more features in the future (like the ability to search posts and add comments). For now though I'm happy with the results, and I finally have a better looking place on the site to post updates.

In the last few days I've also enabled Rich Pins for Pinterest on the site, though I still have to do some pinning to make certain everything looks right.

It's been a long haul, and there are still lots of things I want to add, but the site is coming together.