Right, where shall I start?

The more perceptive among you will have noticed that BigglesZX.com “as we know it” has completely changed. Gone are the vast expanses of green (or red, for the colour-blind), replaced instead by a crisp array of greys and shiny images. Yep, in my never-ending quest for a site UI that can please me for more than a month, I’ve taken the drastic step of moving the site to the WordPress blogging backend. This means that for the first time I’m using a system that I didn’t write myself – which is a slightly unsettling feeling – but it’s counterbalanced by the fluffy feeling I get when entering posts through the WP Admin pages, which is nothing less than a joyful experience.

Yes, instead of an ever-so-slightly shallow home-made interface, I’ve spent my time designing the new BigglesZX.com as a Theme to be plugged into WordPress. That should mean it’s portable to anyone’s WP installation, but that’s not 100% true, as it includes some homegrown bolt-ons like the Chatbox (which had to be included really, didn’t it?) and BOFHcam. But taking the Theme approach means I can make it “mine” as a site while still using all the handyness of WP.

So anyway. Frankly, this new site is more about me than before. The collage of images that form the header are intended to represent my different interests, and you’ll note also the succinctly organised list of categories into which posts will fall. Rather than just infrequent posts about interesting media morsels, the site will carry more blog-like material on what I’m up to, as well as – of course – trumpeting projects that I’m working on.

I need not (but will anyway) say that this is a work in progress – my first WordPress theme was never going to be perfect – so expect to see various bits tweaked, improved or otherwise. The Comments section and popup will be first on the list, as I just used the defaults, and could do better. I just wanted to get a functional system up before I enter the gauntlet of University (in 3 days), and here it is.

When I get a chance I will see about reposting some of the old articles here – in the meantime they can be found at the old site here. Thanks to the miracle of timestamp faking, I can backdate them to when they were originally posted, and for all you know they could have been here the whole time.

Well there you go, introductory announcement dispensed. Stay tuned for more.