Theme Envy

For three hours late last night I sat at my desk, trying to come up with a post for Top Sites Tuesday Number 73 – Two Thoughts on Tuesday. Oh, I had plenty of thoughts … my hyperactive brain turns them out by the hundreds but not every thought makes a good post.   OK, some days I can turn any thought into a post but last night wasn’t one of those days.  I even wrote a post on appearances motivated by two events: my daughter getting braces … again, at 36 … and me shaving off my facial hair.   You’d probably guess, it was a snoozer.  So, at 11:30, I limped into bed (not from blogging … I’ve been exercising, trying to get in shape again) and vowed to try again in the morning.  Before I dozed off, I thought about my day … and in particular, how I’d spent the afternoon.  And they were … the illusive postable Two Thoughts.

For over a year, I’ve been mirroring Older Eyes on my own domain, oldereyes.net, with the notion that at some point I’ll want to move there.  Periodically, I wander over, import a new XML file from wordpress.oldereyes.com to bring it up to date, then play with a few themes.  Here on wordpress.com I use Sapphire by Michael Martine which is a nice, basic WordPress theme without a ton of options.  But I love the way it looks … it’s a little dark, like I am.  But I noticed that when I updated to WordPress 3.01, the new WordPress theme, Twenty-Ten, came with the upgrade.  I previewed it with Older Eyes and looked at the customization available and it was all very nice except I wanted to modify the main body background color … without modifying CSS.  A little web searching revealed that Twenty-Ten has a younger sister named Twenty-Ten Weaver that will let you modify almost anything.   Oh, my, I’ve got Theme Envy and I’ve got it bad.  And Twenty-Ten Weaver is not available on wordpress.com.

So, Thought Number One is this: Is it finally time to move?   I think Older Eyes looks great in Twenty-Ten Weaver and I haven’t even finished customizing (you can see it here or just look at the screen capture).  It will take a while to get used to the differences between posting using WordPress on my own site and the simplicity of wordpress.com, but some of those differences are advantages (virtually an infinite array of plug-ins and widgets).   There does seem to be a pesky little bug with respect to sizing of pictures.   I can market or sell things on my own site … maybe there’s a chance for Older Eyes T-shirts … candy bars … toilet brushes?   Oldereyes.net shows up very high on the search page if you Google Older Eyes, not that it’s brought me any traffic.  People just don’t go around searching for Older Eyes … you either have them or don’t want them.  I’ve even learned how to forward all of my wordpress.com traffic to my new site if I pay WordPress ten bucks a year.  But do I want to move just to have a prettier blog?  Do I have Theme Vanity in addition to Theme Envy?

But then there’s inertia … and this is Thought Number Two … it’s so much easier to stay where I am. I get the benefits of the wordpress categories and tags pages to send me traffic, not that they send me much … with 320,272 new posts a day, I’m unlikely to make it up to Freshly Pressed, where the real traffic waits.  And I can always settle for big sister … Older Eyes looks pretty good in Twenty-Ten, too.   So, here I sit, wondering what to do.  If you’ve got any thoughts … or experience, even … on the subject, I’d love to hear them.  Yes, I know the Geekiness Quotient was unusually high for this post.  Try to overlook that and push my button … gently … to make me Number One on Top Sites Tuesday #73.

Come Join Top Sites Tuesday and be #1 on BlogDumps!
The purpose of this Meme is to encourage
Networking between bloggers to have fun while doing it!
Make sure to visit all the other participants and leave comments.
View More Top Sites Tuesday Participants on Technorati here.
See who Tweeted this Post!

Explore posts in the same categories: writing and blogging

Tags: blogging, humor, memes, Top Sites Tuesday, Twenty-Ten, Wordpress, writing and blogging

You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.