This post is more than a little meta, but bear with me. This is basically a blog post to let you know that things are going to be a little chaotic around here as I transform this site from a blog into a true website, and that transformation is gonna happen while the site remains live, or at least mostly live most of the time. There will be an entirely new theme, but the real changes will be happening much deeper down as I transition from using WordPress as a blogging platform to using it as a true content management system (CMS).

The TL;DR version is that things may look a bit weird here from time to time over the next few weeks, and entire features may go AWOL for a few days.

Those of you who are curious about how the sausage gets made can read on, but really, the reason for this post is to let you know not to panic if you land here some day and everything looks weird.

So, what am I up to?

Well, firstly, I’m building out a bespoke WordPress plugin which will define the data architecture for this site. In WordPress jargon, that plugin is registering a number of custom taxonomies and custom post types, and adding a bunch of custom meta boxes (custom form fields) into various parts of the admin interface to allow me to associate metadata with the various pieces of content that will be hosted on the site. The plugin is coming along well, and I’m really happy with the structure it’s allowing me to put on things.

Now that the data architecture is coming together, I’ve also started work on a bespoke theme that will make use of the new data architecture to present the content in the way I want. I’ve given up on the idea of transforming someone else’s theme into what I want, and started with a completely blank page – yes, that’s right, I’m building my own custom theme from scratch. I always find blank pages scary, but this was a particularly big and particularly scary blank page. I’m making progress though, and it’s a real joy to get to build a WordPress site with all my favourite web tools – the structure of the pages is based on Bootstrap 4, the dynamic elements are being provided with jQuery, and I’m making heavy use of Font Awesome to add iconography through the design.

At the moment the design is basically monochrome because I’m focusing on getting the structure and layout right, and making sure everything is nice and easy to read. Once that’s done I’ll finish the site off with a custom Bootstrap theme to inject a little colour for personality, but not much, I want the site to remain elegantly spartan. The final piece is this big project is a new logo I’ve been working on, or more honestly procrastinating over, for the past few months. When I commit to a logo, that will give me the colour pallet and the font-styles that I’ll use to inject some personality into the theme.

I have to say I’m learning a lot, but this is still a really big job that’s gonna take me quite some time, so bear with me, and wish me luck!