I really wanted to update my site for quite a while now, and make it much cleaner and simpler.

The current version of the site runs a theme called “Me Gusta” that I put up about 6 months ago for the sake of saving time. It was good enough, I didn’t need to design and code it, and looked presentable.

However, it had some issues:

• it’s overloaded with features and feels too heavy for me
• meta information is all out of whack (for example, when someone posts a link to my site, the description is some garbage about using the keyboard shortcuts that come with the theme)
• each post requires an image for a nicer preview
• default styles for elements Pokies Pokies like list items are reset to something really strange – all lists items are displayed inline

Now, it’s very possible to fix all the above issues, but that means going into someone else’s code and trying to figure out how to make it work. And that requires investment of time and patience. I figured that the preferred way for me is to design a clean look and code it with just bare minimum of what I need.

And since I’m doing it, I wanted to document the process – hope some folks find it helpful!

Step 1: Structure and design
Step 2: Coding HTML/CSS
Step 3: Creating a WordPress theme
Step 4: Setting it up in WordPress