I set up Akismet and a subscribe comments plugin because, well, we were told to, and it seemed reasonable. Next, I added the Twitter Tools plugin; I don’t really use Twitter, but this seemed like a good idea — if I’m going to have a twitter and a blog, I might as well connect them. I’ve never set up applications with Twitter before, but it seemed to work fine. (Whether or not it will work when this actually gets posted is another matter) I set up Google Analytics as well, which was easy, since I’d used it before on a blogspot blog.

Next, I tried screwing around with a theme for the blog. I knew roughly what I wanted, at least for the moment: something largely dark and easy on the eyes. I tried this theme generator, but when I tried to install it, multiple errors came up. I wasn’t so attached to the theme I created that I was going to try digging through the code to fix multiple errors, when I have no idea what the problem was, and my knowledge of CSS is basically nil.

So I tried this generator, which worked better, but for some reason wouldn’t update the example as I went. (So I had to download, and then reupload it in order to see what it looked like) This was a pain, but doable — until I figured out that these themes weren’t being replaced, but were just being stored. (So I was building up crappy, half-made WP themes on my webhost account) This wasn’t obvious just from WP, so I went to my cpanel to fix it. I deleted the themes under file manager…and, at some point, deleted the part of the theme I already had. I think. So my blog is officially broken for the first time. (I’m writing this as I go, and just updating it along the way) I’ve decided to just finish the theme that I want, then upload it, and see if I have any issues from there.

I got it to work, although I’m not terribly satisfied with the theme I finished. (Even though it’s mostly black, it seems….bright? It’s rather weird. If you guys have any ideas, leave them in the comments!) I’ll have to play with it some more. I’m done for tonight, though.