I feel sure that I’ve mentioned this before, but I am unable to find reference to it so I’ll say it again. My focus on this blog has changed over recent months, and I intend to use this space to document my journey as a writer from this point in time. That is why I changed the name from Blog to Personal Diary. I will not be setting out to entertain visitors, I will only be jotting down what’s happening and how I feel in regards to my own writing. It was for this reason that I changed the sidebar so that it only includes links to personal stuff. (All other categories can now be found through the pages in the navigation bar above. It is unlikely that I’ll add to those categories in the future; but if I do, it will be rarely.)

This morning, I realised the categories to the right are not really appropriate any more either and need updating. Being one to make more work for myself than is necessary, I think I will take the easy way out this time and leave most of the categories as they are because I don’t want to make time to go through all the posts and move them around. However, the WIP (Novel) category is completely misleading, so everything filed in that category will be moved. There’s only 89 posts, it shouldn’t take me long to go through them all.

New categories will be added and other categories will be renamed (where possible). I am still working through the Personal posts and saving them into my computer diary too. Some of those posts will be permanently deleted once that has been done.

I see these changes as a positive move. They will allow me to focus more on my writing and less on writing posts for this website. I will write a post on my writing soon.

The battery on my laptop is about to run out, so I have to be quick.

The new template is finished. The home page has also been replaced. I like it and I hope you do too. Now that it’s done, perhaps I’ll be inspired to write some proper posts. Oh, I just remembered…I do need to update the home page. The content is no longer current.

Anyway, must go. Time is running out…

I’m happy with the outcome so far. I did experience problems accessing the page earlier, but I have a feeling it had something to do with the widgets. I’ve now customised the sidebars, and no longer use the widgets, so I hope the problem is fixed.

I think I’ve got everything covered, except for the home page, which I’ll tackle another day.

Yes, I’m changing the template again. I’ve already upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress. That went well…and without a hiccup! I’m currently working on the template. There will be a new banner and a bit of a colour change, but basically I’ll be using this three column design.

I’ve run out of time now, so I’ll be back to finish it off on another day.

I’m going to make changes to this website. I thought about changing the template, but after spending a couple of days looking at templates and messing about with them on a test site, I have decided to stick with this template as it has the features I want (with a bit of modification).

In the coming days, and possibly weeks, you might come here to find strange things happening. Don’t worry, it will all be for the greater good in the end.

I don’t think I’ll be posting much until after Christmas. So Merry Christmas to everyone and may 2008 be better than 2007.

Update (later the same day):

I have:

1. Upgraded to version 2.3.1.
2. Gotten rid of the “Read More” buttons so that the entries can be read without clicking to another page.
3. Included an excerpt in the search results.
4. Gone through the posts and deleted the nonsense ones (or the ones I found anyway).

Update (17 December 2007):

I have changed the navigation bar. Some of the pages created, however, are still under construction.

The blog is now called “Personal Diary”.

Update (18 December 2007):

The pages in the navigation bar are all functional. Now I have to change the index page to match.

I have hidden the categories for anything other than my personal posts in the sidebar of this “Diary”.

The “Recent Comments” only shows the comments made to posts that are in the category list in the sidebar. (Comments to general writing or history posts will not show in the list.)

Update (20 December 2007):

I’ve recoded the index page as I’ve never been entirely happy with it. Whilst it looked great in Firefox and the latest version of IE last night, it has a slight problem when I viewed it in IE6 today, so I’ll fix that problem tonight.