Bad Blogger! Bad!!

I like to blog, and I love reading your comments and feedback, and especially enjoy when you like an article/recipe enough to link to it on your own site/blog…

but I’m not a fan of the “behind the scenes” stuff. Mostly because I don’t understand it fully.

I wrote a post a long time ago… in NOVEMBER… reacting to a freak-out session that I had when I tried to fix the broken “previous entries” link at the bottom of my page. Short story? I tried to fix the link, broke my website, and gave up on the link.

Well what if you found my site and enjoyed the first page of posts and wanted to go to the next page? YOU COULDN’T! That’s what. Because the link is STILL broken nearly a year later.

OMG I am such a bad blogger. BAD!

So, this week I’m making it my mission to try to fix things. And this time I’m going to try to fail-proof it. I’ve already backed up my wordpress database (the magic section of things that has all my posts, your comments, that sort of thing) and I’m in the process of backing up the files (wordpress itself, the themes/plugins/images I’ve uploaded, stuff like that).

And then I’m going to start screwing around with things. Why? Because I don’t really understand how to do things like this “offline” and then upload them when they’re all ready. Regular websites? Sure… I can do that offline and upload. But things with php and css and databases and all that stuff I don’t understand? No clue.

The theme I want to install is one I “discovered” a long long time ago, but haven’t switched to because it requires somewhat significant setup. It automatically creates thumbnail images and stuff, but I don’t think it can do that from flickr images that are pulled in through img src html. I think you have to actually upload the image to your wordpress files for it to work. So… once I switch over, things might be ugly until I can load an image for each post I’ve made.

Each of how many posts? How many posts would that be? Roughly 560… dang.

I have one idea for how I might do this without disrupting things here in the meantime… but it may or may not work. If you have any ideas, pleeease let me know in the simplest words and step-by-step instructions you can possibly tell me. Otherwise? It’s going to be trial-and-error city, baby!

But at least this time I know that a possible trainwreck (me) is coming, and this time, I’m prepared with backups (except for this post which isn’t backed up). Score!

And hopefully by the end of the week (the timeframe I’m giving myself for “Screwing around with it”) my website will be MUCH more easily navigable. You’ll discover posts and recipes you’ve never discovered before. You’ll swoon at the gorgeousness of my site, and you’ll want to tell everyone about Joyful Abode… that is, if I can figure it out.

Also? while I’m in there, I need to upgrade my wordpress version (mine is OLD) and I’m going to try out a new plugin for comments that should be awesome if it works properly. Mmm…threads, ‘n’ stuff.