I started my first official blog back in 2005, when Windows Live Spaces was a thing. When they did away with this service, I took them up on the offer to port my blog over to WordPress. A quick Google search says this probably happened somewhere between 2010 and 2011. Regardless, I have been tappety-tapping various keyboards over the years to get my thoughts out of my head and into a more tangible medium. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to find any screenshots of what my blog used to look like in the beginning, which is sad. I love documenting these sorts of things.
My current WordPress blog has had the same basic layout and template for several years, if not from the original migration. I’m not sure what drew me to the mostly brown design, but if it’s what I settled on then the rest must not have fit the vision at all. The blue and green makes sense, and is likely what made it appealing, but I don’t have the rest of the designs that were available at the time for comparison. I did eventually get tired of not having something a little more unique, and customized, though. I’d found it much easier to add new widgets to and customize my blogger sites than any attempts I made at giving my WordPress blog some personality. Every now and then I would browse the templates and still conclude that the one I had looked best for what I needed.
~I had to use the Wayback Machine to snag this screenshot of what my blog looked like before I accidentally overwrote the design. (July 7, 2026)~
When I began in earnest to find a fresh face for my blog, I overwrote the green, blue and brown I’d grown accustomed to with this blank, white, boring space. I wanted to revert back to my original design but it was gone. It just seemed to cease to exist. Frustrated, I left the white void design up while I moved onto other birthday goals, and things that needed to get done for my family. I couldn’t avoid the task forever, though, unless I wanted to leave “makeover my blog” unchecked on the Forty Before Forty list.
~This layout lacked any of my personality, but I didn’t want to mess with it again until I had more information. This screenshot is also courtesy of the Wayback Machine site. (July 7, 2026)~
Raymond and I decided to upgrade to a paid plan because it seemed to open up more customizable options. I had zero clue how to actually use those options. They offered a tutorial video, which was moderately helpful when I actually sat down to use it. I’m not very good at following along when variables don’t line up neatly with what the instructor is saying. That option doesn’t seem to be where you said it would be…um… I begrudgingly took my husband’s advice and used Gemini to clarify where on earth the tools were I was supposed to be able to find. I could almost hear the sigh in its answer, which implied the new WordPress editor tools aren’t as intuitive as they used to be. That was my takeaway anyway, because it sounded like the previous tools were a little more similar to the blogger tools I was used to.
~I staged a still life on my reading chair that I though best represented some of my favourite things and proceeded to take several slightly different photos, moving items just a bit, changing angles…until I was happy with the results. (July 5, 2026)~
There was a lot of grumbling, some heavy-handed typing out of frustration, and a lot of moments where I threw my hands up in the air…like I very much did care…ha. Anyway, I just couldn’t figure it out. I skipped the rest of the tutorial because I was lost. I eventually figured out what I wanted to do through internet searches and called it a day. There are a couple things that didn’t show up that I thought I had edited, like quotes I put in the footer, and there are some formatting issues when it’s viewed on my phone, but otherwise it finally looks closer to what I wanted it to look like, instead of the same ol’ I’d had for years or the boring white space I’d accidentally created. That’s a win for now! If I can find the patience to learn a bit more, I am sure I will continue to fine tune my blog space in the future.
Goal Accomplished: July 5, 2026.
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