Haven’t posted in awhile. My business, HouseofCopy.com, is filling the hours, and I am working on changing the entire look and theme of this site to something simpler, more streamlined and smooth. Not to mention, supported.

When I started out on this whole project back in 2007, I was using Weebly, a free website creator and hosting site that allows anyone to create a minimal, basic, functional webpage with free hosting in less than 15 minutes. That worked great until I decided that I wanted to be able to put a portfolio up of the SEO/SEM/PPC and Copywriting work I have done. You know, because these days it helps to have a job.

I had used WordPress before and was familiar with pretty much every basic when it comes to creating and launching a site using the WP platform. So I set up my hosting (thank you Lunar Pages), installed some FTP software (thank you Cyberduck) and set out to find a theme I liked.

I found a great theme called “Options” by Justin Tadlock, who runs ThemeHybrid.com. This was a theme framework that came with “Child Themes,” a fairly new innovation to WordPress, so I’m told. Child themes work off of a main or “Parent” theme framework, which has its own look. Child themes manipulate various aspects of a parent theme to create an entirely new look and layout. Basically, the parent theme I have been using is called “Options,” which provides the framework, and the child theme I have been using is called “Shadow.” What you see on the actual screen is “Shadow” using the “Options” framework. Pretty cool, no?

Of course, if you are able to find the “Options” and “Shadow” themes (as I mentioned in the beginning, Tadlock has since discontinued them, so there is no longer any support) you will notice that the original version of Shadow looks nothing like my site. That is because, and I’m proud to say it, that starting back in late 2008, I took nearly four weeks to teach myself how to manipulate CSS, HTML and PHP elements in a page so that I could change the layout, color palette, fonts, etc. Looking back, I probably should have started learning from the beginning in a more classroom-like setting (God knows my code, while validated, probably isn’t up to snuff) and learned about coding, structure, etc. from some professionals. But, either way, I learned a lot and now know how to get what I want.

That said, I think my time has ended with the “Options” theme and I am moving onto another framework. The new themes were also created by Justin Tadlock, and are called “Hybrid” and “Leviathan.” As I said before, these will keep the site more simple and sleek, while retaining all of the functionality I want. At the same time, “Leviathan,” the child theme, is designed for the more “long-winded” writer like myself. I’m hoping this works out since I’m narrowing down my posting topics at this point to focus first on my fiction and also on a couple more genuine interests.

Anyway, if you are interested in using any of my suggestions above for hosting, FTP access or themes Justin Tadlock’s themes, feel free to follow the links above.

Say adios to this version of brianthomasclark.com. The new one should arrive shortly. Thanks for all of your support.