I'm planning to revamp my dead blog soon and break out of the generic Wordpress template. It's going to be a major overhaul so i expect to install some plug-ins and a little programming. Thus i'm kind of in a blur right now, don't know where to start.

Of course you don't need to limit your experience to only wordpress. If you use other blog applications or hosted blogs (blogspot, livejournal, friendster blog...etc), share your knowledge as well for other people to learn. Thanks.

And please specify the type of blog you are skinning

codex.wordpress.org --> using template tags

Think outside of the box and have a theme that goes with what your content s going to be. Also, make sure you work with a layout that fits your theme/content.

Plan out what you're planning to have on the blog and then look for plugins that might help you achieve certain things.

hmmm, thanks for the replies..
I've decided to post my progress on my blog as I terraform it.
My blog is at:
Undressing the Internet

Hope that it'll help others pursuing the same goal.

This post has been edited by wantanseller: Nov 14 2005, 12:28 AM

there's a fabulous discussion going on at Jobs & Careers. the scenario of people looking to earn a quick buck from blogging. rofl..

p/s: bookmarked your blog..under web design category rite?

This post has been edited by etsuko: Nov 14 2005, 09:50 AM

i just wanna ask (platform:wordpress)

is it ok if i drop the header.php and footer.php when making the theme ?
why all theme that i've downloaded have them ?
what are they for actually ?
i want to make the layout in just a single document ?? is that possible ?

header.php, footer.php and all the php files in the themes folder are templates.
this means that every page you see will be using a certain number of the template files.
e.g.

mainpage is probably using:
header.php, footer.php, index.php, sidebar.php (in sidebar.php it might include searchform.php, links.php and archive.php depending on how you code it)

just imagine wordpress layout phps as Lego pieces, you mix and match them. Isn't it better if they give you many different pieces seperately than all the Lego pieces glued together as 1 block? Each theme having their set of layout phps is because each one of them are customized to suit the theme. It's like Castle themed Legos have their own set of bricks and Spaceship themed Legos have their own set of bricks.

I'm not that familiar with Wordpress, but to my knowledge you can't just put all in a single document. And I advise against dropping and of them.

for more info: http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page


EDIT:
etsuko: yeah i guess

This post has been edited by wantanseller: Nov 17 2005, 09:56 AM

The way WordPress (WP) works is by using several php files and including them into your index.php later.

They broke it into pieces so that it's easier to manage each section. So like wantanseller said, it's like taking brick A (header.php) and brick B (footer.php) and putting them onto the green platform (index.php)

The other advantage I think it's done this way is so that you are able to share the template later on. If you want all of it in a single document, I think it's possible but you'll need to copy and paste then edit the PHP functions.

If you want to use something that comes close to HTML, then use MovableType.

movable type... is it a free software ?

depends how many authors you wanna include into your blog.

if you're the only one then there isn't any licensing fees. if you want more than a single author on the blog then there's a fees and it ain't cheap.

last time, they only allowed a single author to build 3 weblogs for each installation. now they've increased it to unlimited weblogs for a single author.

Cheers.

okeh.. thanks..