Well, after complaining that I wasn’t feeling motivated, I pushed on last night and did some work on the new template. I’ve got the whole home page done and ready to go; I had some minor details that took longer than expected. The reason: I’m upgrading the blog platform… I’m going from 1.2.0 version to 2.4.0 version - that’s actually a very big step up. Backend functionality is much *much* more improved, and changing and reordering stuff on the page is easier. However, it does mean that most of the old code doesn’t match up with the new, and some functions I have now aren’t available in the later version.

However, I did find a solution to the issue, and things are moving along much smoother now. The problem, which as you’ll see from the above is a large one, is that I can’t simply upgrade the blog and change the template as I go - it means that other pages, like the FAQ, would need the template code upgraded, even though I’m not changing it to the new one.

So for the meantime, I have to create the templates elsewhere, ready for installation; once that’s done, I can transfer them across to here after the upgrade. What does this mean for you, the average reader? It means at least another week of me fixing things behind the scenes, and hopefully next weekend I can implement changes.

Good news is that things will be much simpler and easier to read. The homepage will be an actual homepage, with a short list of latest posts, and some basic navigational info. Icons are completely scrapped: they’re taking too long to make, and I don’t have the patience to keep up with them. The ‘geekblog’ and the homepage blog entries (you don’t realise it, but the homepage blog has two functions: one as an aggregator, and one as a general blog about my shows, etc) will be merged. The links page will be listed at the top menu, as it used to, and will be more obvious that it is a links page. The gallery page will also include my latest Youtube videos. … There’s much more that’s going to happen. But basically the best part is that the new template will streamline the look and feel of the site, and it won’t seem so messy.

More good news - inspiration hit me for a great puppet, which I hope to work on later this evening. Some investigation on building technique needs to be done, but it’s going to be a very cute, very Australian, puppet.