If you’ve visited the blog over the past day or so, there’s a chance it’s gone wonky during your visit. For that, I must apologize. I recently tried updating my Thesis theme and lost some of the customisations I worked so hard on a few months back. At the moment, I am too aggravated and little too lazy to dig out my external hard drive and find my theme backups. In the meantime, please be patient with me and enjoy your visits while IHP wears a temporary theme with a few less bells and whistles. I hope to have the problems sorted out soon, though I really wish I could just chunk the whole layout in and make something new. Sadly, my creative muses are just about defunk. I think they went the way of my reading muse. If you find either of them in your travels, please stick them in the post for me. Thanks!

Things have been a bit up in the air with the blog lately. With the release of WordPress 3.0.1, and Thesis 1.8 (which followed very closely on the heals of Thesis 1.7) there has been quite a bit of upgrading and updating going on. Unfortunately, it’s mostly been with code and not so much with the reading and reviews. Things are beginning to come together, though.

What I’ve Done (So Far):
- Added some new pages
- Upgraded WordPress
- Wrestled with Thesis & Photoshop for a new layout
- Upgraded Thesis
- Wrestled with Thesis again
- At 2:30 a.m. I let Thesis win

What I Still Have To Work On:
- New “Link Me” button
- Fix the “Copyright” footer
- Fix the alignment problem in the footer widgets
- Edit old posts to work with post thumbnails
- Edit old posts to add tags
- Edit old posts to fix categories
- Shoot Thesis & put myself out of my blogging misery

I’m hoping to work on the blog again tomorrow and soon there will be some new content. I know, I hear the shocked gasps from the peanut gallery “You mean, you’re actually going to read something?!?”

I’m almost finished with the layout and design I’ve been working on. Since I didn’t go to sleep last night when I started getting blurry-eyed and kept working, there are a few more things that I need to go back over and fix today. But it’s coming along nicely, despite my bloopers. I may change the 3-columns back to 2-columns because the design looks a little cleaner that way. I’ll take a few of the things that are currently in my sidebars and make pages for them that will show up in the navigation menu. I’ve got a few kinks in the code to work out and a few graphics that need to be straightened out (what looks centered at 3 a.m. doesn’t look so centered after a bit of much-needed sleep). I plan to fix as much as I can throughout this afternoon and evening. I apologize if the blog has gone wonky for any recent visitors. :)

The blog will be undergoing some changes over the next few days as I attempt to update and tweak the new theme. I hope the changes don’t inconvenience you too badly, but the new theme should make things run smoother and look better. That’s my hope, anyway. :)

There have been a few changes to the blog lately. If any of you visited in the middle of the night while things were a little up in the air, I apologize for the wonkiness.

Changes Made:

1. New layout. I’ve got a three-column theme that isn’t terrible, though I need to tweak the css code a bit to make the sidebars look a little cleaner. Also, the layout is fluid. It looks best at around 1200 resolution, but is also readable (but skinnier) at 740.

2. New header.

3. Google Friend Connect has been added to the left sidebar.

4. The categories have been updated, but I’m still in the process of making sure all the posts are in the right places.

5. I’ve added a plugin that automatically generates a star rating in my review posts. All I have to do is enter a bit of code and it does the rest! It even translates the star images into text when posts are read in Google Reader or in a feed.

Well, now that I’ve made that announcement, I’m going to go bury myself in some nice, smutty slash fic. Ta!

Today’s reading procrastination is brought to you by my reoccurring dissatisfaction with the fact that my blog theme does not have a second sidebar. I’ve convinced myself that my blog would be ever so much better if I only had another sidebar. I’ve been searching for wordpress themes that are similar to my current design, but very few are even close to what I’m looking for. I’ve looked into what it would take to further customize my current theme and I end up lost in codes I don’t really understand. I even went over to Blogger and looked around because it’s so much easier to customize things over there. Then I remembered that if I moved over there, I couldn’t export my current blog posts into Blogger without a whole lot of hassle. So, now I’m back here, staring at my pink theme (did I ever tell you that I really don’t like the color pink, and yet all my blog themes lately have been pink?) and wishing the Blogging Fairy would come over, wave her magic wand, and magic me up a sidebar. Oh, well. I need to find something to read to distract me from my Sidebar Blues! ::runs off to bury herself in her TBR pile:: You may now return to your normally scheduled blogging.