WordPress Help, anyway you like it

Life as I know it…

• It really is beautiful...
  

  It's true what they say about misfortune...that, while bad, it helps us to appreciate what we do have. Helps us to be grateful for the seemingly countless blessings we enjoy every day (if only we take the time to *try* counting). But there's more than that. More than appreciation and gratitude. There's beauty. And if we're lucky, maybe a bit of awe. Since my nephew's accident, yes, I've had the opportunity to appreciate the simple joys in life, to be grateful for many small things that had gone on, unnoticed, for so long. But mostly, I've been reminded of that amazing film from some...(read more)

• How to customize the Feedburner email subscription box
  

  So, a while back I wrote a tutorial on adding a Feedburner subscription option to your Thesis site (you can add one to any self-hosted WordPress site, Thesis or not, but my directions are usually spec...(read more)

• Beginner's guide to using PHP w/ WordPress & Thesis
  

  Okay, let's start with an admission. I don't really understand PHP. HTML and CSS? Sure, got a pretty good handle on those, but PHP has me baffled. I don't understand why or how it works, but I do know...(read more)

• How to create a new widget area
  

  I've found it helpful in certain situations to have widgetized areas (that is, places I can drag/drop widgets into from the Appearance>Widget menu) other than the standard Sidebar 1 and Sidebar 2. ...(read more)

• How to style a sidebar widget
  

  If you've used The Thesis Theme for Wordpress, you know that out of the box, it has certain stylistic traits. That is, before making any changes at all, there is a certain style to the font, for examp...(read more)

• My departure...
  

  The last four years have been full of lessons for me. That's no shock, of course. Learning as we go is part of the deal, but it's good to know I'm capable of seeing the folly of my ways, and adjusting. Yes, adjusting. Much easier said than done. Like muscle memory or bad habits, we don't always do what's necessary at the precise moment it becomes such. And it's this lag time that tends to be the most painful, during which so much turmoil abounds. Knowing we need saving is not the same as admi...(read more)

• Giants
  

  Technology such as it is, it's not difficult to be amazed by what we've accomplished as a people. Some of it awe-inspiring, some of it reprehensible, but all of it remarkable in terms of scale and imagination and determination and grit. It's easy to forget where the inspiration for such accomplishments originates. Easy to think we're original in our inclination towards the magnificent. I had the good fortune recently to be awe-struck by the natural world. To feel small. To understand just ...(read more)

• To what end?
  

  I spend a lot of time feeling as though I ought to be doing something else. Something more. Like I'm wasting time, filling my days with folly. Admittedly, I'm not as productive as I could be. And my days are not full of toil. Have I failed, then? Is this cause enough to feel guilty? Seems so. Though perhaps there's another way of looking at it. I have few possessions and nothing in the bank. But if, by sheer force of will and more than a little luck, I can forget about all the other things...(read more)

• Gone are the words
  

  They come and go and have gone again. It's a game of much consequence that I often play with too little respect. There's more at stake than an empty page. Even so, what's one blank page? Sometimes only that. But other times it's the desolation found in the aftermath of the disaster that, while sudden and tragic, could have been avoided. Not easily, maybe, but certainly just the same. That blank page, so recently a budding flower, now a fading memory of love and joy and life. Fading, but not ...(read more)