Earlier in the week I created a to do list for stuff I wanted/needed to get done this week.

One of the things on the agenda was to make a list of things that I wanted to change on the appearance of this blog, here goes:
1. There's a colour mismatch in the div at the top of my page, I need to changed the page background image to match this or vice versa.

2. New Logo: I want to restyle the logo so that it's more readable, my domain name is pretty long but I like it and I'm sticking with it. Based on feedback, I might run it over two lines and may do something with the colours also.
3. Give myself a bit of a makeover. I look like Al Pacino in Scarface and want to just fix up the dark line running down the side of my cheek bone. Yes, I agree this is vain.
4. I'm still using the post title and text styles that come with the custom wordpress theme,. I'd like to have a look at some other styles to put my own spin on the look of my posts. This isn't that important, but I just want to move towards a completely customised look and feel for my site.
5. Need to rework the current ad for RudeVid.com. I threw this together in 2 minutes and I want to update it and create a uniform style for all future ads for site I'm involved with from now on. RudeVid.com was another thing on the agenda and I've been making some solid progress on this too!
6. I generally want to restyle the entire sidebar and give it a look that integrates better with the design of the rest of the site. In addition to this, I'd like to add a few more plugins to increase the functionality of the site. I could just go ahead and install every plugin available but it's important for me to do a bit of research into this area and make sure I select plugins that fit in with this site and increase the usability.

7. Restyle the bullet points used for listed items. I've started using lists on my posts recently as I feel it makes things easier to read for certain topics. Again I want to add my own look and feel to this area and will design my own images for this.
8. I added the SocioFluid Plugin a while back and I may look at other options for this. I want to cut down the number of social bookmarking links I'm using on this site and will either reduce the ones currently listed with the SocioFluid plugin or may look at another plugin altogether.
9. Again, more restyling on the links back to previous/next posts, what I have is ok but again I just want to customise the look and feel my own taste.
10. Last but not least, I 'might' rework the graphics styling on the footer or left align the footer text.
11. - Update: Move this blog across to a linux server, I purchased a linux hosting package a while back to eliminate the index php from my permalink structure. I also think linux is better for open source software such as WordPress.

As you can see, these are mainly all cosmetic css or design fixes, but they are important for me as for each one that I style myself it's me putting my own personal touch on my site. The great thing about WordPress and indeed css is the adaptability. The stuff on my site doesn't look the way I want it to right now but when I make these changes in the right places the whole site gets an overhaul and everything looks the way I want it to and not just the stuff I add after making the changes. I'm hoping to roll out these changes before the end of the Summer. I've taken the first step now anyway and I'm a lot better organised for getting this done with minimal effort. It's only a matter of pulling up this post as a reference and getting stuck into Photoshop and the backend of this site for a few hours to make these changes happen.

I haven't rejected the other stuff on the list, I'll be following up later in the week with another post on my progress

I installed Google Analytics a while back. When I launched my new blog theme a few days ago, I've since realised that I overwrote all the files for my theme and therefore replaced the Google Analytics code. I don't know if many people have made this mistake before, but it took me a few days to pick up on what I'd done. My Google Analytic stats weren't rising and I knew there was something wrong as I was checking my AWS stats that I installed as part of my hosting plan and this blog actually had it's best day of traffic since I started out. So this is just something to be aware of, if you're updating your WordPress theme. Yeah I know I'm spending lots of time looking at stats but I'll be making more of an effort to boost traffic very soon so it's something I need to be looking at.

photo credit: richardmasoner

It's easiest just to place the Google Analytics code in footer.php as the footer shows up on every page and therefore this tracks all hits on your website. There's a nice article on exactly what to do over at ThemePlayground.com. It cleared things up for me as I previously thought I needed to put the Google Analytics code in a few different files, but it turns out that footer.php is the only place it needs to go! If you're using WordPress, there's lots of other nice tips on ThemePlayground and I'll be checking back there for a few tips and tricks as I continue to update this site.

I just uploaded my new blog theme. Everything seems to be working fine for now so hopefully I don't find too many problems along the way It's based on the default WordPress wide theme that I had been using previously and I've customised the header image, sidebar and added some links to my social networking profiles. There's now links to my Twitter and Facebook accounts and others in the nav bar... expect more stuff here soon!

Last week I added the countdown timer to pressurise myself into getting this done and I'm launching a few hours ahead of schedule. Although there's a bit more I'd like to have done, putting the countdown timer there made sure the theme got uploaded today and saves me tweaking for weeks on end trying to make everything 100% perfect and putting off the launch date again and again. I'll definitely be using this method again to get things done!

This is only version 0.1 of my customised wordpress theme and I have lots of changes still in mind for it.

Things I'm happy about:
I'm pretty happy with the general look and feel of the design. It's now a more personalised site which I thought it should be, as after all it's my online cv and I'm the man responsible for getting things done on this site and on other projects I'm working on. I had always intended to create a caricature of myself on the site and tried to give it a 3d like look by leaning over the navigation bar into my site to let readers know who's behind it. I think I've achieved this by gripping my hand over the nav bar. In general, I think the style and layout of the header looks good.

photo credit: Netream

Things I'm not happy about:
As I mentioned above this is only version 0.1 of my updated WordPress theme and there's lots more still to do. I think the cartoon that I created of myself needs some more work and I'd like to brighten it up a bit. I'll be styling the sidebar on the right hand side of the site to fit in a bit more with the look and feel of the rest of the site. I'll also be changing the style of the post titles and maybe the font used in the posts themselves. There's lots of other stuff too that I want to update pretty soon. One thing that is really annoying me is the way that the images for the site load up. It doesn't look good at the minute but I'll get this fixed by changing the background colours etc. to match a bit more. There's also some colour mismatch at the top of the page but these are simple fixes and I'll get them all sorted. The size of the images I'm using can also probably be reduced and I'll look in to doing this too.

So along with the update to version 2.8 of WordPress, my first major site update seems to have went smoothly enough. Here's a look back to what my site looked like at the very beginning. And I'll add a screenshot below here to to show how the site looks at the time of writing this on the 28th of June 2009. I like doing this as it tracks progress on how this blog is evolving:

You can see the comparison in the screenshot above on how the blog looked original and how it looks after my first major update. I think it's come a long way! I'm coming up to my 50th post and hopefully this and the theme update proves my commitment to developing my online presence with even more projects. I've talked before about potential partnerships. I'm hoping this level of commitment and the design of the theme itself gives others an idea of what I'm capable off. I'll be meeting face to face with a potential partner on Tuesday this week regarding multiple projects. As soon as we get things sorted officially, I'll be updating the new ads section on this site with details of these new projects that I'll be involved in!

So things are moving on for me and my online ventures. I was reluctant to push too hard and try to begin new visitors to this site until I had customised the theme, but there's no stopping me now and I'll be trying to boost traffic to this blog now that it gives more of an idea of who's behind iliveontheweb.com. This is version 0.1 and I wont be leaving things like this! Expect version 1 proper... maybe not today.. maybe not tomorrow... but it'll be here!

In the next few minutes, I'll be updating to my new blog theme. Hopefully all goes well. If the site dissappears or is down for a while, you know what has happened

At last, I'm making some progress on updating the default WordPress theme. I've noticed that it's hard to keep all the browsers happy. I made lots of changes this morning that I checked with Firefox and Google Chrome and everything was looking great, I then had a quick check in IE and my sidebar wasn't where I needed to be.

photo credit: kevindooley

I had to track back the changes I made by comparing the original stylesheet with the updated one using beyond comapre from scootersoft. This was quite easy, I reloaded the orignal default stylesheet that comes with the kubrick theme on to my server. I then updated this with the changes I had made on a line by line basis. I saved the stylesheet after every change and uploaded it onto my server, checking each change in IE as I did this. This took a bit of time but it shows the value of using beyond compare to track changes. This will teach me to track all modifications and test any changes in each of the main browsers from now on. As a result of this, I'm thinking that I might have a look at using source control software for editing files and backing up my site. I've used VSS and CVS before so will need to look into installing them some time soon.

I'm hoping to have my new custom theme on the site pretty soon. The changes I've made are pretty simple but I'm getting where I want to be with the theme and I'm keen to get a custom look on this site sooner rather than later.