And the conversion is underway!
August 23, 2011, 12:38 AM
It is time.
The conversion of Schumin Web from an HTML site to WordPress is officially underway. The work of my two testing sites, Falcon and Raven, is complete. “Raven” was hosted locally on my computer, where I could test things close to home. Then “Falcon” was the live testing site to see how things would behave on the actual Internet. Now Raven is kind of being set aside, and Falcon is currently being used as a development location, where the site is getting put together under WordPress.
And look at this:
This is Schumin Web’s main page, as seen on the new WordPress site, with the content missing. If you’re thinking that it looks like a space before the occupants move in, that’s a pretty good comparison. Basically, the house is built. The foundation has been laid, the walls are up, the lights are on, the water is running, and all the little customizations that I wanted are in place. Now it’s time to start lugging all of my junk in and getting it all set up in the new house. That’s why moving is right up there on the list of life’s most stressful activities – because moving, whether it’s your real house or a Web site, is a real pain in the behind.
So this will be my new months-long project. Schumin Web will be converted to WordPress, slowly but surely. Currently, the “Major Areas” section is fully complete (it’s only one page), and “Odds and Ends” is about 50% complete. So far, I can say this about it: the Identifying Metro Rail Cars page is complete, and was a successful test of my plan to get the images out there in as high of a resolution as possible on the new site. After Odds and Ends, I plan to build the “center section” (you know, the contact pages, etc.). Then Archives, the Journal, Life and Times, and Photography are likely going to be built in waves by month. Thus all of the content from those four sections added in, for instance, March 2005, will be added all at once, right after all of the content from February 2005 and before April 2005. This is because photo sets link to Journal entries which link to other Journal entries which link to other photo sets and so on, and I can’t link to content that didn’t exist yet. Thus I shouldn’t have any holes that I have to flag and fix later due to content that hasn’t been ported yet (and thus not knowing what the URL will be). Then the Online Store section, which is hosted externally, will be unaffected. Likewise, this conversion to WordPress does not affect the sites linked to under “Major Areas”. Those are operated separately from the parent site, and receive their own redesigns and upgrades separately from the parent site.
And then yes – I will still be doing regular updates outside of the conversion work.
And lastly, no, I’m not going to be able to give you an expected completion date. It’s too early in the process to tell for sure, but I don’t expect to have things finished up before December, at the absolute earliest. Plus the current build of the site has only been out for 14 months (introduced in late June 2010), and that took me a couple of months to design and build. Thus I’m not in any hurry to abandon that build, especially when you consider that the June 2010 build is probably one of the best builds that I’ve done so far when it comes to clean code and lack of kludging. The WordPress theme is based on the work done for the June 2010 build, and had a similar emphasis on doing it right even if it took longer to do. But the June 2010 build will be there until the WordPress site is done, and done right.
Web site: "Vintage Schumin Web", chronicling site redesigns of years past.
Song: I was listening to the Stuff Mom Never Told You podcast quite a bit today. Pretty interesting material there. You should check it out.
Quote: By the way, for all of you aspiring WordPress designers out there, when I finish, I'm going to add a new Odds and Ends page that lists all of the resources that I consulted in building this new site. Consider it my contribution to the WordPress community, as I will be attempting to provide a one-stop shop for all the reference material I used to create a finished product.
Categories: Schumin Web meta