Just Another Test Post

Hello world!

This little blogging project of mine is finally coming together. No, this blog isn’t officially launched yet, though. I’m still testing and tweaking things a bit, and to be honest, this post you’re reading is merely yet another test post.

Instead of generating some Lorem Ipsum or fascinating stories about quick brown foxes and lazy dogs, I figured I’ll write an actual blog post. So, in this post, I’ll explain what I’ve been doing with this blog so far and what I’m still planning to do before I will officially launch this thing.

What Has Happened So Far

As you can see, I have obviously registered a domain, made a deal with a wonderful Finnish web host, and installed WordPress. I’ve also tweaked it a bit – installed a couple of SEO plugins, fiddled with some general blog settings, and so on.

After some extensive searching, I think I’ve also finally managed to find a very nice free WordPress theme for this blog. Yes, it’s very likely the one you’re currently looking at. If this blog looks weird or messed up in your browser, chances are it’s a bug and not my odd taste in web design, so please post a comment telling me which browser you’re using and what’s wrong.

I know, I could – and probably should – have made my own theme. Back in 2002, when web design was one of my favorite hobbies, I would have been more than pleased to design my own theme. But honestly, these days, I’m way too lazy for all the coding and testing. Besides, although I do know my way with (X)HTML, CSS and PHP, I totally suck at making graphics. While I would love to learn it and probably will learn some day, at the moment, I have so much else to do that my career as an artist will have to wait.

The Trouble with Themes

Going with a free WordPress template made by someone else means going for a compromise. I was well aware that if I’m not willing to design my own template or pay for someone to make one for me, I’ll never find the perfect template. But it’s ok. I decided to compromise and try to find a free theme that would meet as many as possible of these criteria:

• Works in pretty much any browser. I’m currently using SeaMonkey on Puppy Linux, and to be honest, SeaMonkey… well… sucks a bit. Some websites totally, absolutely go kaboom in SeaMonkey. Therefore, it will automatically be my browser test: if the WordPress theme works on SeaMonkey, it’ll probably work on anything. Except for IE, of course, nothing ever works on it. (Now, you’re probably wondering why on Earth am I using SeaMonkey if it sucks. Well, it’s a long story, featuring a laptop, broken HDD controller, and a poor college student who can’t afford a new laptop at the moment. So I’m running Puppy Linux on a live CD and USB stick until I can afford a new laptop. This setup actually works pretty well.)
• Looks professional. It’s hard to define what “professional” means to me, since it’s mostly a gut reaction: immediately, a website emits the aura of being professional or poorly made. Well, I guess “professional” means the same as well made or well thought out for me. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but it means a combination of colors that go well together, good use of formatting and whitespace, and attention paid to details (such as font size and typeface, reasonable whitespace and formatting in lists, etc).
• Looks friendly and artsy. Although I want my themes to be professional, I don’t like those cold and boring themes that are technically absolutely perfect but give out a feeling so sterile they remind you of an operating room. You know, the ones that look like they were made by someone who totally knows their stuff but isn’t passionate about it at all. I’ll rather go for a little less professional theme if it’s giving out a nice, friendly, and inviting vibe.
• Supports threaded comments. Threaded comments make discussion easier. Yeah, I plan to become big and popular and getting tons of comments. A girl can dream, right?
• Has a left sidebar. Originally, I wanted a left sidebar because that would be the optimal place for ads. English is read from left to right, so people will automatically look at the left while ignoring the right side pretty effectively. However, for some weird reason, left sidebars are very unpopular. The best themes I found featured right sidebars only, while the ones with left sidebars or 3-column layouts just didn’t look professional, lacked a critical feature, or just plain didn’t work.

The theme I’m currently using is a compromise and the result of long, loong, loooong searching. I might keep an eye on other themes and switch if I can find a better one, but the moment I saw this theme, I felt like… well… like coming home. Although it doesn’t have a left sidebar (well, there’s a sidebar with post info, but I didn’t mean that) and the theme is on the verge of being too boring and sterile, it meets all the other criteria with flying marks. I can live without a left sidebar and I suppose the theme is still playful enough to not be too sterile.

Future Plans for Light Side Of…

Like I said, this blog isn’t officially launched yet. I’m still testing it and I haven’t promoted this blog anywhere yet, although some people who know I’m setting up a blog will probably be able to guess this URL because it’s the same as my nick on many online services.

Actually, like I already mentioned, this post is also mainly a test post. Instead of generating some Lorem Ipsum or funny stories about quick brown foxes, I figured I’ll write an actual post and explain where I’m currently at with this project. My blog won’t be about blogging or web design, although I might mention this stuff in some future random posts as well.

So, what will I still gonna do before I launch?

• Tweak the theme. Although this free WordPress theme is pretty tight, there are some minor things I want to tweak, such as the style of my post titles and subtitles. I’ll also need to figure out why my posts’ pictures are aligned left, no matter how I style them, while they’re aligned exactly the way they’re supposed to when I try out other themes.
• Not go overboard with Google AdSense. Although I’m not here to make money, I wouldn’t mind being compensated for the hosting, domain, and my time. I already have an AdSense account because I’ve got ads on my other websites. I’ll try to find a compromise between making as much money as possible and keeping my visitors happy. The latter will by my #1 priority, so I know I will seriously under-monetize this blog, but I don’t care. I just don’t want to annoy people with too many ads. I hate it when a website has a huge bunch of intrusive ads slapped all over the place, so I want none of it on my blog. If I land on a website and the first thing my eyes fall upon is a huge block of ads, I’ll press my back button faster than I can say “Goodbye” and will never come back.
• Tweak the layout. I’m trying to figure out the best order for the links in my sidebar, such as categories, search, etc. so that they would be as helpful for my visitors as possible.
• Post a few posts. I want to have a little content here before I officially go public, so people will have an idea of what to expect in this blog. Or then again, not… this blog will be pretty eclectic in nature.

The ads will be my biggest headache before launching this site. I’ll have to not only find a good ad placement scheme, I’ll also have to figure out how to add the code into my template. You see, this is the first time I’m using WordPress, but don’t worry, I’m a quick learner!

Oh, one more thing: If you happen to be one of those sneaky people who know I’m setting up a website and happen to guess the URL, please comment and say hello! I won’t bite ya!