I’ve been refreshing my blog’s look. I created new favicons, blog-banners, and changed my WordPress theme to a simpler and more modern style. I’d really like to harmonize my picture and blog sites, but CSS issues are frustrating me. I have no desire to plunge into the CSS blog sand, but if you care about online appearances it’s hard to avoid.
The last time I changed my WordPress theme, I spent hours editing old posts in an unsatisfactory effort to make them conform to the new theme. Theoretically, you shouldn’t have to do this. The whole point of a theme is to consolidate your visual style points into one easily altered file. But, like many “theories”, the one theme to rule them all theory, often fails when it comes up against complex blog posts that harbor text-wrapped images, wonky tables, program code, LaTeX fragments, Jupyter extracts, and custom HTML hacks.
Yeah, my blog is a mess!
I vowed I wouldn’t edit old posts this time around. When you step in the blog sand it’s hard to get out, but I’m weak, lack restraint, and suffer from a touch of perfectionism. Still, in my defense, how could I live with text surrounded by ugly nontransparent backgrounds? So, once again, I jumped into the blog sand and thrashed about1 trying to make the ugly go away.
The ugly will always be with us!
If there is one take-away from my struggle it is this:
Keep things simple stupid!
Complex typography is best practiced on paper/PDF. When composing blog posts always choose the simplest style that works. If you eschew flourishes the next time you change your theme, and there will be a next time, you won’t sink as deeply into the blog sand.
Blog sand is like quicksand in that the more you struggle the deeper you sink.↩︎
Analyze the Data not the Drivel 