I’m always open to self-improvement and blog reader Leslie mentioned that she was starting to have trouble with the size and color of the font on the blog.  So things look a bit different today.

Web Tools

I rely heavily on two web tools…Blogger (which I use to publish this blog) and Weebly which I use to publish web sites like The Men’s Knitting Retreats.

Both tools make it incredibly simple to do tasks that used to require a LOT more time.  Posting photos, designing a themed web site, hypertext linking to another site, setting up a simple store-front/shopping cart functionality, etc.

Years ago, when these kinds of tools weren’t available, I remember teaching myself php coding so I could create forms for the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat.  I can’t tell you how satisfying it was to create a MySQL database and then write code to create a web form that would populate that database with things like workshop preferences for the guys attending the retreat.

Recently, I’ve looked at WordPress as an alternative to Weebly and there are a number of reasons why it would be a better tool.  The flexibility of the tool is MUCH greater with many more developers adding new themes and plug-ins all the time.  WordPress also has better integration with other platforms like Facebook and PayPal.  With the help of a friend, I went through installing WordPress and playing around with setting up a web site for a new venture I’m working on.  Like many things, (including PHP coding), I found it a bit daunting understanding how themes worked and plug-ins and add-ons.  I found myself continuously translating terms from WordPress into their equivalent Weebly feature.

After getting a much better sense about what WordPress has to offer, I’ve decided it’s overall easier and good enough to stick with Weebly and Blogger as my web site development and blogging tools.  I am giving up some functionality and features, but none that are critical or that I can’t create some reasonable facsimile with clever workarounds in my current tools.

But boy, it’s nice to know all that’s available in a robust web site development tool like WordPress…just in case I ever need it.

Current Knitting

Ho hum…a few more inches completed on the Briar Rose Pullover.

But the nice part is that I have finally started the sleeve hole shaping so it should move along a bit more quickly until I hit the sleeves part of the project.