I’ve been a fan of WordPress for a long time, and have used it for several client sites, as well as my own personal blog. However, my main Web site, at sarahtebo.com, was always a static HTML page. I recently decided to start practicing what I preach, so for the past week or so, I’ve been working on converting my HTML files to a functional WordPress theme.

While the task was not complicated or difficult, it did surprise me how much there is to think about when you’re making a theme from scratch (before, I’ve always started with at least a basic framework). You have to style the comments, make a search results page, decide what regions to “widgetize,” label those regions, style the search box, decide how to display metadata, the list goes on. And several times I broke the whole dang thing by forgetting to close a <div>.

However, it was totally worth it, because now I have a WordPress-powered Web site that acts exactly as I want it to. If you’ve seen my designs, you know I like simple, easy to navigate design. And I’m in love with the “cute critters” icons from Tutorial 9, which I used on my old site and definitely had to include here. Plus, I prefer the “excerpt” function for the index page, rather than using a manual “more” tag, so I could do that too.

Since I’m using WordPress 2.9, I also made use of the new thumbnail feature. It eliminates the need for a custom field to display a thumbnail on your index, search results, etc. pages. Once you activate the feature in your function file, you can set the thumbnail from your media library, or upload an image specifically for that use.

As usual, I figured all of this out as I went along, with the help from some great Web sites, including:

• Web Designer Wall
• WordPress Codex
• WPCandy
• CSS Newbie

Of course, now that my blog is also my home page, I’ll have to blog more often. (Damn you Twitter!) Can’t have months-old content pop up when a potential client finds my site.

Hope you enjoy the new site, and if you find anything broken, please let me know!