MessagingLab had been using Greymatter for its blog for about two years. Initially, the blog had been somewhat self serving, but as we evolve, our goal is to create a blog that is useful, fun and sometimes irreverent.
Greymatter is a great tool. Don’t get us wrong. It is open source and that meant a great deal to us because it allowed us to change it easily.

But we wanted to change the way the site looked and the templates we were seeing weren’t satisfactory for us. That said, we would’ve kept using Greymatter because we were used to the interface and it worked.

Then, I read a blog where someone mentioned that Dreamhost, our hosting service, had a one-click WordPress install. We investigated this blogging software, found that it had numerous easy to install templates, and that it overall would meet our needs.

Upon further investigation, we found a theme that we really liked and that we knew would fit our re-design goals. That template was Ben de Groot’s Neptune. Why the grey and black and blue? It has to do with our current obsession with cassette cases from the 1960s and 1970s. A great site to check out that design philosophy is polar alert. In fact, our new header borrows elements from a 1960s Afga Ferrochrome cover.

Installation of WordPress using Dreamhost was a breeze. After defining the server name, I clicked ONCE. A few minutes later, I received an email telling me all I had to do was walk through the installation process, then, if I wanted, could transfer over the Greymatter files. I was impressed.

I then downloaded the Neptune files. As recommended, there were instructions on how to install. Before we put on the site, we wanted to modify the header. We had already created a new header in MS Word (yes, Word), which was turned into a jpeg using Mac Grab and re-sized using Adobe Elements. Posting it required renaming it and replacing an existing file in the Neptune folder. Then, we deleted some code in the style sheet using Adobe GoLive. The Neptune folder was then uploaded to the WordPress folder on the MessagingLab site.

The new header didn’t appear at first, so we had done something wrong with stylesheet.css. More editing. Re-upload. Finally, the right header showed up.
Now, we’re going through the WordPress admin pages, finding them to be useful enough, trying to figure out how to change the blogroll, where we’ll put our Amazon ads and links. As we make those changes I’ll modify this post.

Total time invested :: 2.5h