I chose Wordpress as the blog engine for my site. I really like the fact that it is free, open-source, and built with PHP. I am already using PHP as the dynamic engine for my site, so the installation was a cinch. The version I installed was 2.8.4.
Here, I briefly review my experience setting up Wordpress for my blog.
Installing really was easy, and it really did take only 5 minutes as advertised, but I immediately ran into a problem as soon as I logged into to the administration screen. Time zone errors appeared in many sections of the administration pages. The error looked like this:
Warning: strtotime() [function.strtotime]: It is not safe to rely on the system’s timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function.
After researching online, I found a good solution proposed by Otto42. Apparently these timezone errors may be related to the PHP 5.3 upgrade. After adding the function call date_default_timezone_set(’America/Chicago’); to my wp-config.php file as suggested, my problem went away.
My next task was to create my own theme, so that my blog pages looked like my website, and not like one of the built-in themes. To do this, I basically followed the instructions that Jonathan Wold so generously made available.
I made a copy of the classic theme, renamed the folder, and edited the comments of the style.css page, and I was up and running with a theme I could edit to my satisfaction.
Because my website is using PHP, it was very easy to switch out the Wordpress classic theme headers and footers with my existing ones, and then use the classic theme templates for the content. Next, I re-did all of the styles to match my site, and then changed around the sidebar and comment page layouts a little.
After all of this, my Wordpress blog is now seamlessly integrated into my website.
You know how new TV shows sometimes take a few episodes before the cast and crew figure out what the voice of the show is?
That is how I am viewing this blog, which is my first ever, so please bare with me as I get the hang of this.
In this blog, I am planning on writing about some of things I am interested in. These include Japan, multimedia/computers, anime, and psychology.
I would first like to share some thoughts on the nature of blog writing.
I have always been good at English, especially literature classes, because I like stories so well. After working hard on writing in high school, college, and graduate school, I finally became comfortable with traditional forms of academic and letter writing, but I have close to no experience with blog writing.
I read online recently somewhere that having a blog can actually help you when looking for a job (which I am doing now). On top of that, it seems that having Word Press skills is good for web consultants (which I am).
My first actual blog was in Japanese, on the Mixi site. I thought I would be “different” and start my online life in Japanese.
But now that I have my own website, am interested in Facebook, and now Word Press, so I decided it was time for me to have my very own blog, on my very own website. Welcome to my Blog!