The Gomez Blog

I always make fun of people using blogspot (like my wife), saying they should be using a real blog app like Wordpress.  The power and extensibility of Wordpress is at times astounding.  And version 2.8 seems to be much improved in the backend.  But every once in a while, rolling your own blog can have its downside.  For me that happened this weekend.

First, some background info.  My blog was using a free template from Smashing Magazine called Color Paper.  When I set it up, my CSS coding skills were still a bit weak.  So I left it the way it came with no customization.  It looked good and seemed to work fine.  I was writing a post on tithing and realized it was time to upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress.  I found a plugin to upgrade automatically, installed it, ran it, and presto, my blog was gone.

That’s right, gone.  Blank page, no matter what I did.  I checked my database and thankfully everything was still there, I just couldn’t get anything to show up.  I tried reverting back to a previous version of Wordpress.  No luck.  Changed all the file permissions, just in case.  Nope.  I finally tracked down the problem which was with the free template I was running.

After fixing the template, running the upgrade, and finishing up my tithe post, I decided to go looking for a new template.  I went back to Smashing Magazine and found this free one, Agregado (portuguese for syndicate).  I really liked the layout and the extensions, but the color scheme was a bit girly for me.  So I decided to flex my CSS muscle and take a shot at customizing my own template.

Here it is.  I’m pretty pleased with how it came out.  I’ve still got some image icons to redo to fit my new color scheme, but I think the CSS stuff is basically done.  Let me know what you think.