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Pardon the mess as I move to WordPress and Theme Hybrid / Skeleton

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Over the next few days, I’ll have the new blog coming together, built on Theme Hybrid, a WordPress theme framework. I’ll be using the “Skeleton” child theme which is really just the raw output of WordPress with all the HTML tags in place, together with a complete bucket load of empty CSS styles ready for me to fill in. This will be an experiment! I’m used to coding from scratch, but the classes and reasonably semantic names of the HTML tags of Theme Hybrid should make this a relatively easy endeavor. I couldn’t bare to look at the temporary theme with no header up there on top of the new blog, so I tossed my new header (which is wraping because it was too short). So, yeah, the site looks befuddled as of 9/03/2009. Don’t let that fool you!

WordPress vs ExpressionEngine

Going to WordPress from (rather, in addition to) Expression Engine feels a bit like giving up my chisel, hammer and leather apron for a lathe, band saw, and lab coat. However there is so much packed into WordPress, and Theme Hybrid in general, I’m looking at it quite differently. Different solutions for different problems indeed, but in wanting ever to be the craftsman, it feels strange and liberating to hand over the custom functionality I’m used to creating in ExpressionEngine to the WordPress backend. It is very, very powerful stuff! As a freelance graphic designer, time is limited, and time is money. When it comes to publishing on the web, the key is speed and ease, since spending time on a fully-customized blog or web tool is simply counter productive, when at the end of the day, it would take months of work to equal what WordPress with Theme Hybrid (or any of the other popular frameworks) provide practically right out of the box.

About Douglas Bonneville

Douglas has been a graphic designer since 1992, in addition to software developer and author. He is a member of Smashing Magazine's "Panel of Experts" and has contributed to over 100 articles. He is the author of "The Big Book of Font Combinations", loves cats, and plays guitar.

Comments

  1. Craftsman Font says

    Nice decision in moving to wordpress rather than staying in expression engine. It still nice environment though and thanks for your experience it really helps me a lot and I will stay in wordpress just like what you’ve said “time is limited, and time is money”.

  2. Douglas Bonneville says

    They are both great platforms, but Expression Engine can do blogs well, but WordPress does them with much greater ease. If you want an integrated dynamic site AND blog, EE is the way to go, as making different “blogs” in one blog is a lot harder in in WP. In EE, multiple “blogs” is native and customizing them is done right on the backend. So easy. Not so much in WP. So, as I usually, say, use the right tool for the right job. Straight ahead blogging is WP all the way…