Word Press version 2.7 is being used to run the blog portion of this website. The software has been instilled within the blog directory that sits one level below the root directory and it is accessible by going to the url http://www.patrickrunfit.com/blog. The root level is http://www.patrickrunfit.com and the blog has been installed inside of blog. After installing Word Press inside of the blog directory it has been customized to look like the rest of the website with an exception. The main difference in appearance is that the blog uses a three column layout versus a two column layout which is used throughout the rest of the site.
In order to get the blog too look like the rest of the site took time, patience, and understanding of learning a new piece of software. After installing the blog and configuring it so it would appear within the blog directory it was time to get to work on its appearance. If you are not familiar with Word Press like myself it took a while to learn how to use the software application and understand all of its different components. After exploring the software and experimenting it was time to get down to the task at hand.
Word Press uses themes to determine the layout and appearance of your blog. In looking through all of the different themes, I stumbled upon one called Sandbox. This theme is very basic in nature that is black and white allowing a person to customize it so it will appear the way they would like it to. After finding this layout it was downloaded from the Word Press theme web page and added to the themes directory of my installation. After placing the theme in the directory it was then possible to select it from within the blog.
After installation it was time to roll up my sleeves and start my learning on how CSS, XHTML and PHP are used to create a theme. Without knowing anything about PHP made it some what challenging to understand the relationship of all of these items. This was also the reason that a theme was chosen instead of creating a new one from scratch. Learning about these relationships took some trial and error until it was possible to get things to start looking the way that I wanted them to.
Without knowing PHP, I worked on learning how the XHTML and CSS were created by looking at the source code of the main page of the blog. After taking a look at the source code, I copied it and saved a copy of my local computer along with the CSS for the SandBox theme. I then worked with these two files to customize both the XHTML and CSS too look like the rest of the website. This was the easy part because it did not involve working with Word Press or requiring any knowledge of PHP. Once everything appeared in a way that, I was content with it was time to go back to the blog.
The first step was to replace the CSS inside of Word Presswith the CSS on my local computer. After replacing the CSS in Word Press the blog was not looking the way as it was intended. To get things to look ok some of the PHP tags had to be moved around to match the layout that was needed to have the columns in the correct order. Once the columns were in the correct order from left to right it was time to edit some of the XHTML that appeared on some of the PHP pages. Additions were made to allow for the global navigation of the website to appear in the left hand column and for the breadcrumbs (Home –> Blog) at the top of the page to appear in a certain way.
This is a brief overview of how the blog section of this website was customized to appear like the rest of the website. It is far from a perfect masterpiece but it does look very similar and hopefully does not cause to much confusion to people viewing this part of the site. Both the blog and website need a few modifications to make them look more like each other.