A redesign.... Finally? - Andy Reitz (blog)

Well, a few weeks ago, I had the idea of creating a new blog, and importing all of my posts from this blog into it. With this new test blog in place, I have been experimenting with new styles for the past few weeks. Today, I felt comfortable enough with things to attempt to spruce up the real thing.

As it turns out, getting things to this point has consumed most of my day. Well, really, watching the football playoffs consumed most of the day - but I was working on this at the same time, honest! The whole templating / design / style part of Movable Type 4 is really inscrutable. It was made worse by the fact that my blog had a lot of cruft in it from that original MT 2.6 install. But instead of reverting when things didn't work - I have stuck with it. Having a working blog to go off of has helped things out. But I still couldn't get everything working right - so I have spent some time this weekend puzzling over the Movable Type manual.

At this point, I'm not super happy with Movable Type. I have sunk a good chunk of time into simply getting one of their canned styles to work - I haven't even gotten to the point where I tweak things to make it look like how I want. I think I'm going to stick with MT through the impending 4.1 update - but if that doesn't fix up a lot of my gripes, it might be time to get the wandering eye with my blogging software. Specifically, I'm thinking of going the hosting route. I'm not sure if all of the effort that I'm spending on getting my blog to simply work wouldn't be better spent like, writing in it.

-Andy.

When I first started blogging, I didn't know if it was going to stick, so I just rolled with the default template that shipped in Movable Type 2.6. I figured that if I started blogging a lot, then I would go back in later and make it look nicer. Well, it's nearly 4 years since I started blogging, and the whole time I have been stuck on that plain style that I started off with. I've attempted re-designs before, but they typically got bogged down by my lack of understanding of CSS or Movable Type, or both. I usually try to change the style every time I upgrade Movable Type, but it has always resulted in a severely broken blog.\n\nWell, a few weeks ago, I had the idea of creating a new blog, and importing all of my posts from this blog into it. With this new test blog in place, I have been experimenting with new styles for the past few weeks. Today, I felt comfortable enough with things to attempt to spruce up the real thing.\n\nAs it turns out, getting things to this point has consumed most of my day. Well, really, watching the football playoffs consumed most of the day - but I was working on this at the same time, honest! The whole templating / design / style part of Movable Type 4 is really inscrutable. It was made worse by the fact that my blog had a lot of cruft in it from that original MT 2.6 install. But instead of reverting when things didn't work - I have stuck with it. Having a working blog to go off of has helped things out. But I still couldn't get everything working right - so I have spent some time this weekend puzzling over the Movable Type manual.\n\nAt this point, I'm not super happy with Movable Type. I have sunk a good chunk of time into simply getting one of their canned styles to work - I haven't even gotten to the point where I tweak things to make it look like how I want. I think I'm going to stick with MT through the impending 4.1 update - but if that doesn't fix up a lot of my gripes, it might be time to get the wandering eye with my blogging software. Specifically, I'm thinking of going the hosting route. I'm not sure if all of the effort that I'm spending on getting my blog to simply work wouldn't be better spent like, writing in it.\n\n-Andy.\n