Fix up hultberg.org
Status: nearly done, which is all I think one can hope for when it comes to a personal website…
Website is now in a presentable state and I don’t cringe every time I see in my log that someone has visited it.
Original text: My personal website is messy, broken and quite frankly a bit embarrassing. Time to give it the Phoenix treatment: burn it down, and make a new one from the cinders and ashes.
Remaining tasks:
- Tidy up really ugly styling of images added to blog posts.
- Rebuild “Dusty Attic” page, linking to all sites in old attic page.
- DONE: Create “Other Sites” page, linking to other sites I am somehow involved in.
- IDEALLY: Move tummyrumble.hultberg.org over to my own host from TypePad…
Plan of attack
Get a great theme from WOO themes, and hack it to what I want to do.
Site needs to mainly show different sides of me, and link to various aspects of my online persona. Social profiles, blogs I post on, my CV at LinkedIn, my latest photos from Flickr, my latest tweets.
Basing it on WordPress, hopefully I can use existing plugins for all I want to do and code as little as possible.
Debrief
Went remarkably well, with not too much time spent banging my head against things I don’t understand / annoying CSS weirdness.
Used WordPress on my host Mediatemple.net, making sure to change table prefixes and administrator user name for increased security. The new WordPress 3.0 installer is much nicer than the old one.
Theme is AntiSocial from WOO Themes. Cost a bit, but starting with an existing theme saves so much time. Well worth it to be able to build a complete new site in less than a day’s work. Besides, when you can’t design for shit like me, it is crucial to get a bit more polished look.
The only thing I needed to hack was adding more widgetized areas to the start page to fit in the latest tweet and randomised photos from Flickr. Sweet.
Plugins used:
- Social profiles, widget included with the theme
- Twitter for WordPress, for latest tweet
- Disqus, for comments
- WP Greet Box, to show a text with call to action to subscribe to RSS to new users
- Fidgetr, for lates photos from Flickr
- KB Advanced RSS Widget, to pull in latest posts from my blogs
- Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator, got to think about the SEO…!
- Secure WordPress, to minimise risk of being hacked
Update 21/12/2011: Decided to add a blog. For those times when I want to write about something which isn’t food (then it goes on my food blog Tummyrumble) or restaurant business related (in which case it goes on the Livebookings blog).
