I wasn’t happy with the layout (or “Theme” as WordPress calls them) I had when I put this site up, but I was having a difficult time finding something I really wanted. I had stumbled upon Openswitch.org and really loved the looks of what the site owner had going on with his theme. I was looking around after that for one that came close so I could alter it and turn it into what I wanted, but with most of the themes I ran across it would be like trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

More than a few times I saw reference to a Theme called “Cutline,” and though it looked the closest to the Theme at Openswitch I just wasn’t sure…and it wasn’t exactly the same. I went ahead and downloaded it and put it up for a test run. “Hmm, great layout,” I thought, “now what do I do with it?” So I played with the CSS code and some of the PHP (which I am a total noob at doing). Okay, I played a lot with the CSS…I was bound and determined to get the look I wanted. At one point I was stuck and couldn’t figure out where to put the background image. Normally this wouldn’t have perplexed me, but I was running on empty - I hadn’t realized that I had gotten so into what I was doing that I had stayed up all night working on my theme. I think it was way worth it.

Chris Pearson, the creator of Cutline, has created a masterpiece of coding with this theme. It’s almost foolproof. It has a lot of wonderful advantages over many of the other themes out there, at least from what I’ve seen, and it is so versatile!

So what you see now are the fruits of my labor. I hope that Ben Gray over at Openswitch doesn’t get upset with me, because now that I look at both of these sites side by side, they are awfully close. But, in my defense, I stole nothing from anyone, I tweaked the CSS and PHP all on my own, and even figured out how to do some of the things I was unsure of before Chris could answer me back with questions I had. (Which, by the way, is another wonderful component of the Cutline theme - it has it’s own support site)!

I was so excited that I could include five photos, taken by my daughter, Cat, that rotate with every page transition or upon refreshing the page. I made the banner/site logo located at the top of the page, myself in Paint Shop Pro (what I prefer to using Photoshop). I am probably not done with all the little changes I want to do. I want to add and change a few more things, and organization will be a key component as I continue to build cynarajane.com.

I just want to thank Chris Pearson again for such a fabulous contribution. It’s wonderful things like this that make it a joy to edit and personalize a WordPress theme. I don’t think I’ll ever use anything else, unless Chris comes up with something better, which I’d be shocked at since this is primo.