Embrace Soul-Searing Disasters ‘Cause They Rock!

Good morning!

Actually, it's the afternoon.  Somewhat close to 4pm, I might say.

Today's work effort certainly ended up 'way differently than I had anticipated!  Brutally difficult, hair-pullingly agonizing but wow oh wow, the results…they're glorious!

And I want you to learn from my mistake so should the following harrowing adventure attempt to crush *your* soul, you'll be ready to boldly state *Ha Hah!  Hit me with your best shot!* and rise to the occasion.

Here's what happened!  (and if you're not a hacker like me, you definitely *want* to join the free community over at Expert WordPress for help and support!).

It was a dark and stormy night, and the wind softly whistled seductively to me.

"Your site!", the wind murmured.  "It's 3+ years old…don't you think you should optimize the database?"

"Will it result in automatic freshly-brewed coffee goodness?" I responded.

"No," responded that butter-soft, enticing tone.  "But think about it…what could possibly go wrong?  After all, this is *Wordpress!*"

"oOo", said I.  "You're so right!  Everything *is* working fine now – let's just gently stroke the database with the fine feather of Outstanding Optimization!"

So!

I boldly installed the plugin wp-optimize , idly noticed I had approximately 3,498,291 things that needed to be done (okay that's a wee bit of an exaggeration, but yep, there were thousands of thingees to be removed), backed up the database and let 'er rip!

And rip…

And rip…

And rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and rip and

It timed out.

And when I checked on me site, I found the Thesis theme kinda sorta…..broke.

At least, that's what it looked like from my first panicked glance at the 16 unformatted tabs that ate the previously svelte dropdown menu.

Now, I'm *not* a Thesis developer.

Fact is, I *much* prefer the home-grown goodness of merciless hand-coding while clad in black leather and lace through a telnet terminal prompt while nestled in a ksh prompt the way the gods meant for development to occur!

But I digress.

Anywhos!

That menu was soon fixed, but the main display of me site (what normal developers would call index.php, and what I call "Heart-felt Pitiless Thesis Hooks Whose Sole Confounding Purpose In Life Is To Belittlingly Taunt Me With NO index.phps") was broken bigtime – the main page simply gave a dump of the last 10 posts of a category.

All together now:

I realized  I had two choices.

I could  pay the developer to take a look at it!

But while I have no problems paying for quality graphics…paying for someone to touch code just doesn't flap my earlobes.  That's something I should be able to do!

I could teach myself how to fix it!

True, I also am earlobe-deep in building up the Virtual Coach site, but still….code….it beckons me!

And then it happened.

I realized my third choice:

I could look at this as an opportunity to improve what was already there!

I've learned so much since the site was updated last year….all I needed to do was become….a Thesis Master of the Universe In Disguise!

Cue dramatic music like so:

Oh I *like* that music!

But I digress.   🙂

To make a super-long story short, I taught myself how the custom_functions thingee works, and then came across…. Create a Feature Content Slider in Thesis!

Be still, my beating heart!

I designed these images:

• I created a new category entitled Benefits….
• I wrote 5 quick posts that describe the above images…..
• I turned on the slider….

And voila!  Instant gloriousness!  Check out my main page to see it in action.

Whew, what a day!  And it all happened because my site…she broke.

Funny how things turn out for the best, aye?

The take-away for you, however, is what I'd really like to share.  And it's this:

Give yourself permission to learn some of the basic coding behind WordPress files.

It honestly is not that difficult to tackle…and once you understand how it works under the hood, you gift yourself with wings to make changes in the future!

It's a wonderful thing indeed.

Grow strong,

Barbara Ling

ps – speaking about WordPress, have you seen: