Conversion to WordPress

Okay, I’ve just spent a chunk of this weekend moving this entire site to WordPress. I figured I didn’t want to change too much at once, so I’ve pretty much just cloned the entire existing site.

It was easier than I thought; WordPress 2.7 seems pretty solid. The theme was quite an easy conversion from my previous hand-rolled site (the joys of CSS!)

The only tricky bit was writing a custom plugin to display the Flickr gallery on the photography page. That’s now ended up better than before, as it’ll dynamically update (if I tag a new photo on Flickr with a particular tag, then it’ll be dragged through to the gallery automatically now.)

I’m also using Lightbox II, courtesy of Rupert Morris’s plugin, so the photos display in a slick and Ajax‑y fashion.

Once the dust has settled and I’ve shaken down any bugs and problems (stunningly, I got it working in IE6 without too much hassle, so I’m sure something else must have gone badly without me noticing…) I’m going to have a bit of a reorganisation. I may dismantle the photo page completely and just point people at mattgibsonphoto.com when it’s properly up and running, for example.

But for now, I think this complete overhaul will have to stand as it is for a few days, while I get on with other stuff in my life…