Skip to main content

A Garden of Virtues

For once, I have very specific things in mind for my new site. I know just what I want and how I want to do it, but it is not coming together like I hoped, and I am disappointed about this.

There are a few problems.

This site must employ RSS feeds, podcasting and vodcasting, a blog with picture upload, and preferably an associated photo gallery. I want it to be completely portable, so that one can subscribe to any or all elements through an external program. Wordpress can do this.

I have Wordpress on Winter-light.net, but I must set it up myself on mont.cc.

There are two problems: they are external/presentation issues, but unless they feel right to me I positively cannot proceed. That is because if I make a change, all the work I will have done will have to be redone.

The first problem is URL. I have those two domain names. For reasons long to explain it would be far easier to do this on winter-light.net, but The Garden of Virtues doesn't sound anything like Winter Light. I don't want to put it on a subdomain because it is My Site and I want it to have special distinction. Mont.cc might be best now that I consider it. There are instructions with my registrar that can walk me through making my own database, though I sure don't want to.

But basically, A Garden of Virtues will be a perfectly portable, perfectly explicit place to harbor all of the things I love to great extent-- I will be able to email posts to it, as well. But it must be perfect, otherwise, there seems no point.

Which comes to my discussion on site layouts. There are so many unattractive site layouts. Mine have never been objectionable, but over the years I have slowly shrunk into cowardice at CSS, etc. And have used defaults.

But Wordpress is free license software, not corporate like Blogger or Livejournal, and its layouts are somewhat unprofessional. That and I have no ability to modify them. I may be able to tweak a little, but I don't know where to start. The thought of it is overwhelming.

But I have devised a plan. I will put the Garden on mont.cc and make a database, no matter how difficult. Then I will upload all of the templates I think have promise to the Garden and slowly learn to modify them. This will be long and not as gratifying as a ready-made, but I really cannot start my site until I am sure it can be as perfect as I need it to be.

I am at Waffle House today. I desperately craved a change, and some sweet tea. I am also editing Glass House.

Today has not been bad. I have not been loafing, but I will very likely have that opportunity this afternoon. When I loaf, I do not edit my stories, because they require too much concentration, so a slow day is actually not gratifying to me.

By the way "Fray" thank you for your comments as of late. There are many advantages to being an adult, or have you forgotten them? Shall I remind you?

Popular posts from this blog

Where does it lie

I look out onto the yellow and brown vegetation beneath my window, at the castle-like buildings far away and wonder where do I lie in all of this? There was a time when I was unfettered. This was a time before I entered the working world, before I was independent. My heart was free as a bird when I was in college. I did not know what happiness I experienced in my creativity because I had never known different. In other aspects of my life I knew pain but my stories, sprung up lately from a gothic mist into an immersing Pre-Raphaelite painting, were a richness and the most beautiful thing I had ever known. That the most beautiful thing I knew to exist happened inside of me made me very happy, even though I didn't know it. Now I know the sun is setting, even though I can't see it, because the bank of brown, twisted trees and shrubs is lit gold, like a reflection from a golden chalice. Slowly, slowly it will fade until everything is a homogenous, uncertain gray. This is the nightma...
more &

Cassandra stood poised at her vanity mirror. Her long hair, which spilled past her waist, was twisted in one hand, and in the other was a pair of jeweled scissors.

As she lifted the scissors to cut, a larger hand wrapped around hers. Cassandra withdrew with a cry. "Kell! I didn't see you come in." He took the scissors away. "I take it you got the job." "I did," she said crisply. "Return my scissors to me." "Not if you intend to cut off your hair. What do you mean by this nonsense?" "I can't have long hair in the laboratory. It might catch fire or something." "Look there." He guided her to the window. Below them lay the scattered remains of a centuries-old city park. The benches were near invisible due to growth, while the pond had extended far beyond its original boundaries. Ducks floated serenely on its surface. "We played as children. Do you remember how you prized your hair?" Cassandra laughed a little drily. "Of course. I insisted all my powers as princess lay in my hair. I was haughty. unworthy of the friendship of you and your sister." ...
more &

Snow White and the Prince

I dreamed in darkness, cold and alone. Phantasms shifted around me, frightening me, but I was powerless to escape them or even move, as I was sealed in a casket. I thought of the Queen, my Stepmother, and tears dripped from my eyes as I considered the quasi-poignant moments we had once shared, when we might have been considered to be close, when the Queen had nearly been a mother to me, and the face of love had shone radiantly upon me, before eclipsed again by the storms of Venus. I thought of the huntsman, stung to consider that my only friend had been poised to betray me, to kill me, and again in my mind I felt the horror of his shadow, of waiting while he came behind me, knowing there was no escape for me from a death he would inflict. My heart lifted as images of the Prince entered my mind, his grace atop a white-maned horse, always out of my reach, just beyond the words I longed to speak. If only there had been more time for us to fall in love. He might have saved me from those...
more &