Although I have owned the Personville Press web domain for more than a decade, I haven’t really had a chance to update it. I know how to do websites. I’m an old pro with WordPress and have even made some static HTML websites with varying levels of success. Because Jack Matthews titles comprised the bulk of Personville Press’s catalog and I already had made a website for the author, there wasn’t any urgent need to make a separate one for the press. Also, I didn’t quite know what software was best suited for my needs. WordPress software can be rather bloggy, and I would need to make a lot of customizations.
In 2020 I made a static front page for Personville Press which was basically a brochure website. I just wanted to make something simple that would nonetheless be viewable on mobile devices. It served its purpose for a few years, but I was eager to move onto something lasting.
Of course, I realized that hard-coding static HTML is cumbersome and hard to maintain. So I was eager to jump to a content management system. I realized that WordPress core offered a lot more functionality than before; I wouldn’t need to rely on page builder plugins to accomplish what I wanted. Long live WordPress Core!
The problem with php/Wordpress is long term site maintenance. You have to babysit it and apply security updates. Also, I didn’t want to be dependent on one theme or plugin that would stop being updated. I wanted something headless to avoid security issues, but eventually I decided that dumb and simple was best.
That meant going with WordPress after all. That meant meeting two requirements: 1)using one of the included themes (2025) rather than a third party theme and 2)making a usable front page.
A lot had changed with WordPress since I first installed it in 2003. I had managed my own blog and Teleread.org, but honestly, my technical knowledge needed to be updated. In 2023 I learned about using the block editor to make fairly sophisticated site customizations. I also test on tablets and phones, so I know what the typical site visitor will see.
I had to relearn a lot about things with the block editor and also to learn about content blocks. Some of it is really tricky and confusing. It’s true the content blocks offer a lot of variety and power, but they can be tricky. Two months later, I still don’t know how to use Featured Images correctly and override thematic elements. But I’m mostly there.
The big challenge was coming up with a front page that let the visitor browse the catalog by ebook cover. I installed WordPress on my local machine, so I could figure out how to recreate the minimum functionality of the static HTML cover. Once I did that, I began working on the front page that you see now (and I love). It took a long weekend to get that done.
The next step was making a robust template for the ebook page. Luckily I already had some experience doing that on the ripemangotaketwo.com website, but it was still hard to get right. (The page for Minor Sketches and Reveries is what I ended up with — and frankly I’m proud of it.
Another challenge I faced was whether to use pages or posts for content. I found myself making pages for everything and not using posts anymore. After all, I don’t normally have a lot of bona fide news. Pages are weird in WordPress. You typically have to make a custom page with a customized heading. Then you have to create “patterns” for the content structures you want to insert.
So I started with the non-Jack Matthews stuff. Then I will make pages for the Jack Matthews stuff as well. It may take a while though.
The other task was creating a section for the blog/news. That meant creating new template for the News Archive. Here is what I used to make the News Archive Page. This was not easy to figure out! (And I’m still learning about the config details).
It can be hard deciding whether to put up dummy pages before actually putting content on them. It can look unprofessional. I still haven’t had time to customize the footer for all the templates. On the other hand, a micropress doesn’t normally get a lot of traffic; most site visitors won’t notice these kinds of things.
Anyway, it’s still a work in progress, but I have already done most of the heavy lifting. I’m still experimenting with things. As a writer and editor, I often don’t allow myself to spend too much time fixing technical issues . I have a hundred other things to do first.
But progress is coming slowly.
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