New WordPress Theme and Migration Plan

Jan 16, 2011 // by page.lysupportadmin // Blog // No Comments

I notice the traffic over on the WordPress blog has been picking up steadily. Just so you know what’s up with that, it’s a copy of the content from www.cnccookbook.com’s blog presented with more traditional blogging software (WordPress). The original blog (and I can’t tell which one you’re reading so the wording is awkward!) has each page hand crafted in Dreamweaver. That’s great for the project or cookbook “recipe” pages, but we don’t gain much doing that for the blog. Hence I want to ultimately quit hand crafting blog pages to free up more time to do the other stuff (can I get a “Yay”?).

I’m not going cold turkey though. I run the two in parallel. I am gradually copying posts from the historical archives into the WordPress format. That makes it richer. In addition, you can write comments on the posts and you get a link to each post, which is handy if you’re into bookmarks are want to refer someone to a post without forcing them to page down to find it. Links to individual articles also makes search work better if you’re trying to find some article you know you read but can’t put your fingers on. Best of all, you can use Google Reader or some other RSS reader so you know when there is a new post and you don’t have to constantly be checking back to see.

The vast majority of posts are still not copied over to WordPress though–I have been at this a LONG time, so there are a lot of posts to move! I try to move 2 or 3 every other day, but it will take a while. Meanwhile, all the posts that were done in the hand crafted style may be found via the Index.

Those of you who have been watching will notice there is a new WordPress theme. The first one I tried was very high tech, but it was also very dark and some found it hard to read. The latest theme is much more like the original CNCCookbook look and feel.

Here is how the migration plan to WordPress will work:

- There will always be a www.cnccookbook.com home page, but eventually, it will cease to be the Blog page and will be more of an introduction to the site.

- The Blog will be accessed via the “Blog” choice in the left gutter or at the top of screen menu bar in WordPress. In practice, you should be able to pass freely between the WordPress and regular sites without noticing the speedbumps too much.

- When I am satisfied the two sites are working well enough together, I will replace the CNCCookbook home page, and change the “Blog” menu choice to point to WordPress. Up until that point, I will dual post to WordPress and CNCCookbook any new blog posts.

- I will continue to copy posts from CNCCookbook over to WordPress so they’re there. As I mention, I try to do 2 or 3 every other day. I will also add a link to the Index to WordPress so you can get at the really old stuff that hasn’t moved over yet.

- I will also do an update on the overall look and feel and navigation for the CNCCookbook site towards the end of the process to make navigation between the two sites even more seamless.

With luck and diligence, this process will be complete by mid-year. It isn’t a super-high priority thing as most of the bang for the buck is available now and I want folks to have plenty of time to get used to it. Not to mention I still have lots of work to do on the G-Wizard Calculator and G-Code Editor software that takes most of my time!

Anyway, check out WordPress and drop me a line if you have any suggestions!