Theme change

| Chris Riley

You’ve possibly noticed the look of my website has changed. Last week when I tried to publish this post https://lifeofrileyow.com/2019/04/05/bunbury-farmers-market/, I had trouble loading it. It was quite a colourful post, with lots of pictures. I contacted WordPress and it seems my existing theme was a bit antiquated, and an updated theme might help in the future with lengthy posts!

As a result I’ve been playing around with new themes, and have decided to go with this one. I’m surprised how easy it was with WordPress to change it over. Not that it’s going to be without any hiccups, I’ve already come up against a few, but I’m working through them. I hope you’ll bear with me while I get used to the new format.

You’ll notice the Broome sunset photo has now replaced our previous photo of our rig overlooking the Great Australian Bite.

The old rig from an old life

Not before time – we sold that rig at the end of 2017. Not only that, the blog has long since evolved from a diary of our ‘life of Riley on wheels’. The blog now is about anything and everything, a real eclectic mix. Hence the ‘OW’ following life of Riley has evolved to be ‘on whatever’, instead of, ‘on wheels’.

I’ve thought long and hard about which photo to use instead, and finally settled on a sunset. Not another sunset I hear you moan! Haven’t we all thought that when being presented with yet another sunset, only to find it’s completely different to all the other thousands of pictures of sunsets. That’s the beauty of sunsets. They’re completely eclectic, with no two the same. I kinda think that suits this blog that jumps from travel, to Mr Tilly, and everything and anything else that sparks my interest to write about.

One of my favourite of Paul’s photos

Next I’m going to try and do something with the categories. They are a mess, absolutely all over the place, with far to many, and double ups that make little sense. WordPress tells me that if I delete a category, all the posts in that category will revert to uncategorised. I hope they’re right. I’m hoping to delete several categories and re-categorise a lot of the posts more suitably.

That’s the plan anyway. Wish me luck!

I’d appreciate any feedback, good or bad on this new format too. So please don’t be shy about leaving a comment below. And in anticipation of a few frustrations as I go through a bit of learning curve – thank you for your patience.

30 thoughts on “Theme change”

    1. Thanks Miriam. I’m still trying to get my categories sorted out, and then I want to get it looking more presentable all round. I’ve been noticing some very well presented sites lately. Amanda from Forestwood, Jonno and Joanna’s from Jwalking, plus a few others, and now yours. My old theme, twenty-eleven just had to go. Big learning curve now though for this technology challenged lady.

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    1. It was taken through a smoke haze on Cable Beach last year. I love the colours in it, and that red ring around the sun. I’ve never seen a ring around it before.

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      2. Broome is a great place for sunsets, and when there’s a smoke haze the colours are stunning. We’ve seen a deep purple sunset there once, and didn’t have our camera….

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    1. I haven’t had a chance yet Amanda, but I’ll give it a go soon. I’m having trouble deleting the categories I don’t want, and am waiting to hear back from WordPress. I accidently changed my default category to one I was trying to delete altogether. I’ve changed that back. I’ll have to take a look at the tags.

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      1. I read somewhere that you only need one category and mine always defaults to community to start with. You can have up to ten tags or so to be included in the reader. The category helps with folks finding your blog by the search engines, as do links to previous posts. All fun.

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  8. It IS looking good Chris, but I suppose I have a bias towards using ‘sketch’ as a theme! Thanks for the info on categories. I have been meaning to delete a few of mine but I dont want them all uncategorised. I tend to use more tags these days than categories. What are the hiccups you have run into?

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  10. It looks great. I’ve thought about changing to a lighter theme too but I know it changes everything right back to the original post and it might mess up everything. I’ll be following with interest to see how yours goes.

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    1. Apparently I’ll be able to change it back if I’m not happy with it. I’ve been pleasantly surprised how smoothly it’s gone so far though. I was expecting it to be an absolute nightmare.

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    1. Thanks Jonno. I looked at a couple including the one you use. In the end I thought this one looked a but simpler. I wish I was more confident, and competent with technology. But the truth is any technical changes scares the hell out of me.

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  12. I like the new look. Seems you and I are both doing a little house cleaning. I too have changed themes and working on categories. Which theme is this one? I went with “Olsen” and am not sure how I feel about it yet. I had to upgrade my site anyway because I was running out of media storage (go figure!). This week, I’ll be working on reorganizing my site… fun 😏

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    1. Mine is called sketch. First I tried twenty seventeen, but I wasn’t keen on that. Then I asked a couple of bloggers which they use. This is the one that Mandy from Forestwood uses. I looked at a few, and this one looked relatively easy. Technology changes scares the hell out of me though.

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      1. Haha … I can relate to the ‘technology changes’. My good friend Nancy also uses Sketch. I think I’ll stick with this ‘Olsen’ theme but check out Sketch as well. Good luck organizing your categories.

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