Greetings ground squirrels! Do you gaze wistfully at your airborn cousins, wishing you had a bit of extra skin between your appendages so you, too could sail peacefully in the treetops? I didn’t think so.
Getting back to business, my bumpy transition to WordPress is (more or less) over!! It took a bit longer than I anticipated, due 100% to my numbskull approach to web design and coding. I have to admit to a small degree of surprise that I didn’t make like the little old lady in Romania and accidentally bring down the entire interwebs in the last few days. But I didn’t and here we are.
With the new site I added a few things and rearranged a few things, so I thought a formal introduction would be in order. Squirrels, meet snugbug. I know your little squirrel legs are tired from having to climb instead of fly to get to the tree tops. And then there’s the mental exhaustion from having to continually check your little squirrel-laptops to see if my site was back. Let’s start with the home page.
Home sweet home
I switched to a magazine format with the new site, so the main home page shows a bit of everything. There’s dedicated spots for my new posts, recent tutorials and reveals. I also integrated my daily outfit blog (I shudder to call it a style blog) into this site, although if you’re not interested in that you can bypass it easily. Finally I added a new section “Ideas and Inspiration.” This is a collection of links, thoughts, pictures, etc – just stuff I find around the googles that I fancy and think you might too!
I’ve marked up a screenshot of the homepage, detailing the new layout. Lord willin’ and the crik don’t rise, you can click on this to see more detail!
Whew! Thatsa lotta homepage!
Too much? I made it easy for you…
I totally realize that I (and maybe my mom) am the only one who might be thoroughly amused by such a packed-full homepage, so I made it easy for the rest of you forest rodents. If you’d rather just see a page similar to snugbug 1.0 (that’d be my blogger site), then just click ‘blog’ on the pink menu bar at the top of the page. You’ll get a page that looks more like a traditional blog. All of my new posts EXCEPT the daily outfit/snugbug365 posts will show up on this page. WARNING!! The theme defaults to the excerpt view for this page type. I’m working on fixing that so you don’t have to click in to read the full post, but it’s actually an somewhat extensive fix. From what I understand. Or not. I’ll get back to you on this asap!
Comments, Comments all over the place…
So, one of the main reasons I’ve wanted to switch over to WordPress was to get threaded comments. I think they’re great and encourage interaction, not only between me and you, but between all you guys when you’re squirreling around and I’ve become mesmerized my butterflies and can’t bother myself to open my laptop. Once I got the page set up, though, I realized that I don’t really understand WordPress’s commenting system! I comment all the time on other WordPress blogs, and somehow they know who I am… anyhoo, here are a few screenshots showing the comments section, along with notes on how to use commentLuv to show off your OWN blog whilst abusing mine… (again, click to see full size)
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Tutorials and reveals. Gallery style.
Once I got started setting up the new site I became OBSESSED with finding a way to set up a click-on-a-thumbnail gallery style way to show past projects and tutorials. I succeeded. These two pages can be accessed via the pink menu bar (under ‘closet’ and ‘tutorials’.) Once you get over to the page, just click on the photo to view the original post.
BTW, if you think that ‘closet’ is a semi-pretentious name for the page of reveals, you’re not alone. I think so too! I just couldn’t think of anything better to call the page. ‘Finished’ and ‘Reveals’ seems so, um, abrupt. And my drop down on snugbug 1.0 was ‘My Custom Couture’, so at least I’ve amped down the pretention a teeny bit.
I’ve split the ‘tutorials’ (talk about a pretentious term – these are barely a stab at a how-to, more a plea for help, really) – anyway, I’ve split them into a few different sections – ‘Making Clothes’, ‘Fun Stuff’, ‘Restyles’ and ‘Techniques and Tools.’ Everything’s all on one page, though, so it should be easy enough to find stuff.
snugbug365
As most of you know, I’ve been keeping a daily outfit blog for the last month or two. With the new site, I found a way to bring that into the fold. Much like the blog page above, the snugbug365 page (accessible from the pink menu bar) looks like a traditional blog-style page, but just shows the daily outfit posts. I’ve set up a separate RSS feed for the snugbug365 posts that you can find on the home page as well as the snugbug365 page, so if you just like getting those posts you can do so without getting all the sewing stuff.
Shop and Archives. A few more of my favorite things.
The last few menu items include ‘about’ and ‘classes’ which are the same as on snugbug 1.0. New to this version of snugbug is Archives and Shop.
The Archives page is a visual/calendar style page showing past posts. I couldn’t find a way to do the same type of archive list showing post titles as I was used to from blogger, and I thought this was sort of fun. I suspect I may be the only one who looks at it a lot when I’m trying to find posts that I want to link back to. Just hover over any image to see the post title and click to view.
The shop page is a gallery style page showing items in my Etsy shop. Just click on the image to go to the Etsy listing!
Snugbug on the Road
If you’re in posession of one of those smart phones, well, first off I don’t understand how you make ’em work with your squirrely toes. I can’t operate my iPod Touch with gloves on. But that’s neither here nor there. My new site actually works amazingly well if you view it ‘normally’ in Safari on an iPhone, but nevertheless I’ve set up a clever little app-like view for those of you on the road. Just head over to the site in Safari on your smartphone and find a super-easy to navigate snugbug! It’s been tested on an iPhones and an iPod Touch, but not on any other smart phone (as far as I know). It should work on most of them!
We’re definitely in beta
The tour’s over, you fluffy tailed, flightless forest rats. I was too exhausted excited to not launch the new site, but I still have a lot of work to do! Past posts are going to have wonky images and broken links. I’m going through and fixing, but a lot of it is a manual process and we must continue to move like the great white sharks, right?
Hey! Where’d everyone go? There aren’t any sharks here. And even if there were, they’d be so interested in a plump morsel like Lucy they wouldn’t even notice you squirrels.
Enjoy! Feel free to email me with any comments or suggestions – or if you see anything wonky (other than my love of clashing colors and the afore-mentioned funky photos!
Special SUPER thanks to those of you who took a look at the test site. Your comments were so helpful!!
Watch out for a celebratory giveaway to commemorate the new site!
Great job Patty !!
Just need to find a way to increase the font size for my 48 year old eyes !!!
Such a wonderful attention to detail.
Thank you for sharing, Aileen
Rats! I thought I changed to a more-clear font. I’ll bump up a bit!
WOWZA! Very impressive! I’ve been thinking about transitioning to WordPress as well but it seemed like such a headache! How long has it taken you?
Debi – some parts took a long time – longer than they probably needed to because I am an obsessive freak attack in possession of CS3. If you were to switch to a basic theme and go with the settings that it comes with, it doesn’t take too long to install and import everything. You just need to do some extra stuff to make sure you don’t ‘lose’ people during the move! I’ll probably do a blogger to wordpress post sometime, since it’s fresh in my mind (and i’ll need to remember what i did when i update!)
Wowza, you have been busy ! There’s a heck of lot of content here too. Do sungbugs ever sleep?
Wow, it looks great!
My only (minor) critique is that the font is hard to read. It’s not the size (I can bump that up on Firefox no problem – Aileen, try hitting control and “+”), it just shows up light and delicate and pretty and seriously eye-straining.
I freely admit, I have old lady eyes. Which is why I prefer print fonts that you would be likely to see in a book or newspaper.
But man, I love the separate area for tutorials, finished projects, etc. That’s so awesome.
I’d like to find a font with the look that I like that’s a bit easier to read, but need to fine-tune the font installation process (meaning, I need to learn how to do it!) I’ll keep all ya’ll posted!!
You should have seen the font that I picked at first… if you think this one’s hard to read, even *I* had a hard time reading the first one. But it looked cool!
I actually love the “closet” idea and don’t think it sounds pretentious at all! I started with a WordPress blog but couldn’t figure out how to customize it without pulling my hair out learning code. I did like the fact you could reply to each person individually though! Anyway, well done on the new site, Chief Ground Squirrel!
Patty, your blog is so cheerful with all the color. I follow a trillion blogs on Bloglovin, but yours is my favorite! I always get a little thrill when I see that you have posted something new! Thank you for all your hard work.
It looks great!
Yay, you’re back! Now are we talking tree squirrels or ground squirrels? Because the ground-squirrels of my acquaintance just have little nubby tails, while the tree-squirrels have the big fluffy squirrel tails. I could get into the teeth, too, but then I’d have flashbacks to my undergrad and might have to shoot myself.
Too bad the self-hosted wordpress blogs don’t find the pictures from the wordpress profile… but I lurve me some threaded comments 🙂
Hi Tanit-Isis, my WordPress profile image showed up after I posted – at least it did on my computer. Maybe it’s simply because my computer knows me, but if you can also see it, then I likely have something (accidentally) set up that allows my profile to be accessed by self-hosted WordPress blogs. (By the way, I’m a huge fan of your blog but writing that first comment always makes me so nervous – so hello. It’s nice to meet you.)
Hi, there, I just started reading your blog very recently so I can’t compare very well, but I thought I would put in one more request for a different font…for me it’s not the size of the font, but the font itself…just a little hard to read!
Thanks for everything, though! Wish I could take a class at your shop!
awwww… rats. I’ll bump up the size a bit!
Gosh you have been busy I have been wondering all day what was going on with all the random beta posts. Its looking good I’m very jealous. I think I might have to get Piemaker (aka Coding Genius) to have a little go on my blog! I hope all the manual fixing goes well!
I love the new site! It’s fun to browse through everything like you’re looking at an open house and wishing you could move, too!
And I love love love the blouse in the ideas and inspiration section and want to know more about it.
Yay! Fun! Isn’t that shirt awesome? I accidentally deleted the link during the setup, but I remember that it was ‘for sale’ on one of my favorite blogger’s sites – I think it may be an anthro shirt – BUT I was thinking that Simplicity 2601 in the right color/trim combo would be a total shoo-in for a copy!
OK, now I’m going to your blog to read about eating spiders.
Beautiful, Patty! I love the new site. I’m a big fan of WordPress as well, but so far I’ve stuck to the standard templates they offer. To do all of the fancy stuff you have here – the special home page, gallery of completed projects (aka “Closet”), and many of your other cool features – do you have to have a self-hosted WordPress blog or in some other way pay for those features? Thanks! And, again, great job!
My theme (with the special home page) is a premium theme that I paid for – I think it’s worth it, for nothing else, for the support from the developer! Everything else was free. The Gallery is set up using Next Gen Gallery with an additional plugin (for the plugin!) to get it so it goes to the post page when you click on the image.
I have a self-hosted blog and a buncha plugins. It’s more confusing (and hard!) but worth it for the flexibility!
Ah, yes. From what I know, plugins aren’t included unless you pay for services. I always check out the new themes, and some of the most recent ones with the magazine-style layouts have been so appealing to me. But, I can be fickle in my tastes, so I worry I’ll pay for a theme and then want to change it after a month. Maybe once I’ve been blogging for longer (I only started in January!), I’ll know more of what I want and be able to settle on a theme. Thanks for your quick response!
My God youve been busy! (hides head in shame and scuttles off to make banner for blog, finally)
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