WordPress calls them “themes”, but in classes I teach on website-building I often refer to them as “skins”. The templets that control how a blog website looks and functions are built by programmers who greatly simplify publishing, but severely limit what you can do with them … that is, without building your own skins.
I haven’t wanted to learn that language. I am getting by just fine publishing, building websites for myself and building for others without adding that level of complexity to my life.
BUT I really haven’t been perfectly content with the themes I have found. I REALLY LIKE the ones I am using at Bitterroot Bugle.com, Idaho Liberty. com and Ted Dunlap.net. The problem is the developers “improved” it. The version I am using there is out of date. Their replacement stinks.
The developers have this nasty habit of wanting to earn some kind of payment for their labor. I, on the other hand, have a propensity towards paying nothing as long as I can find a satisfactory product that costs me nothing. So I spend hundreds of hours trying to get the “free” skins to do what I want.
That The Fixer.biz doesn’t suit me as well as the obsolete ones mentioned above attests to the fact I have yet to find a theme as good as the obsolete ones at the price I stubbornly insist on paying.
Today, after repeated attempts, I found a theme for The Fixer.biz that is okay. It isn’t lovely or exciting, but does have all of the features I demand and many that I desire.
Perhaps if this blogging stuff wasn’t simply an economic drain on my personal budget I would be more inclined to actually pay for a skin I wanted.
Maybe if I had more time and fewer things I wanted to do with my time I would simply learn the language to build my own themes.
But those are not my reality.
What you see here at The Fixer.biz is going to DO for quite a while.
I have firewood to cut/haul/stack for winter.
I have ammo to load for testing… then for upcoming matches.
I have irrigation systems needing refinement.
I have an HF radio that has yet to be installed.
My radio-room/studio has more shelves between now and “finished”.
No, perfect will have to wait. Good enough is here for the foreseeable future.
