SQJ Taipei

Back in March 2006 I wrote:

If you are here… I guess you found us somehow… I’m going to change this theme at some point, but for now I hope you like “Gentle Calm”. It seems like it works and with moving, etc in our house right now… we could use all the “gentle calm” we can get!!!!!

I’m learning a lot about WordPress (the new blog engine) but I can tell I’m going to LOVE THIS SOFTWARE! I’ll try to post later!

My blog was originally hosted at blogger.com and it was OK. Blogger is a lot better now than it was then due to a recent upgrade… but at the time I started it was only OK and eventually screwed up my blog massively. I had already been thinking about moving to Wordpress and so just took that opportunity to make the switch.

I’ve always wanted to change the theme (as I mentioned in that old post) but just never felt like I could decide on a new theme or decide if I wanted to spend the time or not.

Lately, I’ve been frustrated almost every time I post because I see my layout and think of all the other things I’d like to do with the blog (photo feed, recent comments, etc) but I didn’t want to mess with the old theme at all.

Gentle Calm… you have served me well.

But today I switched to a new theme, Cutline 3c. It is a 3 column version of Cutline.

Originally, I didn’t like 3 column sites with a fat column on the left and 2 skinnys on the right… but the more I see them… the more I like them… so much so that I have one now!

Like any good theme, this one is highly customizable. Here’s what I did.

People come to a blog for content… it is there on the left where it should be IMO… then the first sidebar has other things DIRECTLY related to the blog… related posts, recent posts, recent comments, archives, categories, and the blogroll. The right side will be stuff that isn’t directly related to the blog, but is related to the blogger… SQJ. You’ll see photos from Picasaweb… LastFM music info… books I’m reading… and a few badges.

I’m not done tweaking this theme to suit my blog… I’ll need to change the header image (although it does look like it could be Taiwan!) and I’m going to add some more static pages in the next few days…

I’d like to thank Chris Pearson who coded Cutline and GPS Gazette who modded it for 3 columns. Great job everyone involved. Thanks also to those who make excellent plugins and widgets for Wordpress. What a great community and what great blogging tools! I’ll try to do a post about the plugins and other tools I use for SQJTaipei.

Let me know if you run in to any problems as you click around… OK? Thanks.