MY NEW LAYOUT

Blogging woes… again…

A few weeks ago I had a message from BlueHost informing me that as their rules were changing, I would no longer be able to upload unlimited media unless I went Pro. I signed up for this, and immediately my whole site was inaccessible and showed an error message. After two lengthy online chats with them, they got it going again, but all my customisations had disappeared. I was informed that there was probably a conflict with the theme I was using.

I spent a long time getting things back as close as possible to how things had been but it was clunky, and I really wasn’t happy with it. Then my lovely friend who loves to comment on my blog told me that she could no longer do so as she was presented by a Capcha message, when I didn’t have such a thing installed. I tried several different things to get around this problem, without success. Eventually I found some information online which said it was due to a conflict… again…

Welcome to my new look blog

This time I decided to abandon the theme I had been using, and went exploring for a new one. The one I settled on is called OceanWP and according to several sources online, this is a very popular one and is used by many individuals and corporations, and has a good track record. It works with a page builder called Elementor which was a lot easier to use than the one supplied with my old theme, which I simply couldn’t get to work properly.

I have had to redo a huge amount on my blog. This has been quite a learning curve, with lots of online explorations to find answers to my seemingly intractable problems, especially with the header, but eventually I got everything to work, and I am very happpy with it.

Fancy shmancy home page

In the past, I wanted to have a static home page but could never get this to work properly, so I opted for the “most recent blog posts” version, with thumbnails and a brief summary of the text of each post. This is now the page you come to when you click on the “Blog” link in the top menu of the home page (or on any page on the site, as this header is global and works everywhere on the site).

For the home page I have selected a moving carousel at the top, and a static gallery underneath. The carousel shows a series of slides which move across the screen, each one giving an example of the kind of creative work that I do. The animation can be be paused either by hovering or clicking on it. You can also advance or reverse it by clicking on the arrows. It resumes when the mouse cursor moves away from it. It also contains small dots which you can click on, and this will take you to individual images in the carousel. The gallery shows the main areas of interest – mostly creative, but some personal, such as our beautiful cats, and our various outings etc. I was not able to add links to these to take the visitor to the relevant information on each subject, but once you get into the blog proper, all the categories and tags, and the whole archive, are in the sidebar, and the search box is available as part of the header everywhere on the site. If you click on any of the images in the gallery, it will take you to the light box where you can get a closer look, zoom in, etc. This gallery is basically a taster of the delights lurking within.

The only thing that I have not yet got to work is how the header looks on a tablet or phone. It looks a mess, but once you get past that, the menu is intact below, and you can access the site in its entirety, and as far as I can see the rest of it displays correctly.

There are one or two more tweaks that I need to do but I think it is OK enough not to be ashamed to see in public now!

I hope all my visitors will enjoy the experience of exploring my new look blog. Have a trawl around. I shall try and keep on top of the perennial problem of the over-zealous spam checker which tends to block people from commenting but I’m afraid I don’t always remember to do this.

UPDATE – I tried commenting using my hubby’s computer, and the wretched error was still there. I have spent more time on it, and the problem is now sorted. I disabled all the plugins and then reactivated them one by one. I tested the site each time I reactivated one, until I found the rogue one, which is now deactivated. Everything seems to be working OK now.