So, some of you may have wondered where I’ve been the past few weeks, as I haven’t put up anything new except for WWE show recaps. Now that you’re here, you’re already aware what I’ve been up to - it’s the new look of PezXPress The Mind’s Chew Toy!

When I first started Pezazzle PezXPress The Mind’s Chew Toy, I was working with a program that was brand-new to me at the time: NetObjects Fusion. While this was decent, once the site started getting a little bit bigger, NetObjects Fusion became somewhat of a deterrent to creating more content, as every site change had to be done on every single page.

Later, a new computer came installed with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, and I switched to that as soon as possible, as it’s template files and it’s more intuitive ability on website design really helped save time when updating changes sitewide - and opened the door to doing even more with the site.

More recently, I stumbled across WordPress - and life got even easier. With it’s database function built right in, it again opened whole new worlds of possibilty to me, and I switched ASAP (although I have kept some files in Dreamweaver - including the “Today’s Birthdays” original pages seen on the right side of the home page).

With WordPress Themes, I realized if I ever wanted to change the look of the site, all I had to do was install a new theme, and the change was effective sitewide immediately. Plus, with the huge amounts of free themes available, I could change the site as often as I wanted, and never worry about my (very miniscule) website operating budget.

But I Wanted A Little More…

As I began to modify PezXPress The Mind’s Chew Toy more and more, I realized that none of the themes out there really fit in exactly with the look I wanted for PezXPress The Mind’s Chew Toy. Sure, they were all great themes, but none of them really sang out as being the one I was looking for. While a few were good for a little while (Anaconda, Cordobo Green Park and, most recently, Silver Lexus), I eventually wanted something more personalized to PezXPress The Mind’s Chew Toy- not something I could see all over the web.

With that personalization in mind, I set about designing my own. Using a very simplistic theme as a base (Blank WordPress Theme), I worked until I had what I wanted.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t tried it out in Netscape, only in IE - and it fell apart in Netscape. Plus, for a reason I never discovered, all of my external php files (including ads, etc.) caused major errors with the theme, so I had to start all over again, causing me to think the entire week I had spent working on that theme was a complete waste.

Try, Try Again…

Thinking I had started with to minimalistic of a base my first time out, I started over with a different base: Gila 10, a fully-functioning free theme. A bit disheartened from my first failed attempt, I attempted another go at it - and found that my previous work proved to be a great asset this second time around. Since I had already designed the look (and gotten the CSS to work on individual pieces - even if it didn’t work on entire pages), I was able to fly through creating the base. Also, this time around I constantly checked my work in both IE and Netscape, making sure the content at least looked similar in both.

After that, it was merely trimming up the edges, and adding in a few of the extras I had added to the previous themes on PezXPress The Mind’s Chew Toy. Eventually, I was finally able to unveil the new look on Monday, and am pretty pleased with the results.

Still A Few Kinks In The System

  1. A major kink (and this is a problem I’ve been having since starting to use WordPress) is the Internal Server Errors that appear much more frequently than expected, mainly on the main blog page of the site. I have yet to come up with a solution to this, and will keep investigating for possible causes. If you know how to fix this, or if you’re having the same problem and are stumped as I am, leave a comment. I want to see how widespread this is, and if it’s happening under all sorts of different web hosting companies.
  2. Another kink I’ve recently discovered is the site breaks a bit in older versions of IE, which is something I definitely have to work on. While it doesn’t become unreadable, it does produce large gaps in the text, especially on the first post of a page, and the footer floats next to long content.
  3. And, putting in the javascript required for the photo thumbnails in the Movie Photos section to enlarge to full-size on the same page as the rest of the article (named IBox) seems to freeze the new theme when I add it, so it’s removed for the time being (the effect of which has the photo opening in a new window - and without a description - when the thumbnail is clicked). I’m working on trying to integrate a slimmer version (named Flashbox) instead.
    [***FIXED*** Turns out the Kimili Flash Embed Plugin I was using doesn't work with any of the Lightbox versions. I uninstalled it, and installed SlimBox for the pictures (which had the least effect on page-load time out of all of the Lightbox versions I found)...and it works no problem now!]

The New Look In Action

Despite these growing pains, however, PezXPress The Mind’s Chew Toy is running under it’s own personalized theme now - which was the original goal, so I must say it was 2 weeks well spent.

So, feel free to browse, and if you come across any bugs in the site that I haven’t mentioned, be sure to let me know (and include your browser and version if you know it), so I can work on getting those glitches I may not have yet discovered myself.

And, as always, thanks for visiting PezXPress The Mind’s Chew Toy!

 
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