Before starting this blog I wanted to get the website perfect. Instead of writing content I was frustrated with getting my site to look just like I wanted. I imagined my homepage having pictures of each new post side by side, a search bar, a drop down menu to filter by categories, and a filterable ranking list. It took a while, but I got the homepage to have pictures although it’s currently limited to 9 posts a page with each row of 3 posts taking up a huge chunk of the screen. There’s also an option to go to the next page, but I wish it listed the number of pages at the bottom. Instead, it makes my earlier posts harder to find.
I also think it’d be cool to have customized category pages. If someone’s only interested in coffee reviews, they can go to that category. The design is more coffee focused and the rankings on that page will also be accessible and filtered to be only on coffee.
This is my main objective. I am going to work on it and then report back and rate how possible this is to achieve on WordPress and the process of it.
Update 1:
After two hours I made some progress. First off I was able to get my homepage to display 20 posts instead of 9. It’s a lot easier to take in the content and I’m not sad anymore when a post I woke the week before is already off. It makes me appreciate my reviews a lot more. I could also have expanded it to be 5 reviews in a row, but I thought that looked a little too busy. This site is ultimately for me as a creative hobby, so if I’m not feeling the homepage then I’m not going to be inspired to write.
The next item I made progress in is my rankings list. From what I can tell there’s not a way to make a filterable list without a plug-in. I’m on the cheapest personal plan that doesn’t give access so I had to get creative. After research I decided to import my previous rankings list into a google sheet and reformat it. Then I was able to embed it into a new WordPress page so that anytime I update it in google it should do the same on the page. This is huge. My next plan is to make pivot tables off of the master list for each category and find a good way to present it on the site.
Both of these wins were annoying to deal with on the interface. The homepage took forever going through screens and inputs till I was able to adjust both the columns and posts per page. Based on the instructions it shouldn’t have been as hard of a time as I had. To be fair though I have zero website creation experience even though I consider myself semi techno savvy. The list took forever to get the html embedment to display on the whole screen. I couldn’t find a way to display the list on the whole margins, so I ended up using smaller fonts on the google sheet. This is one I hope I can eventually get for ease of reading.
There were times I thought what I was attempting wasn’t possible, but perseverance paid off. WordPress is a powerful tool if you know how to navigate it. If you’re a beginner like me then wear a helmet before all the headbanging figuring this out induces.
Update 2:
What a major pain in the ass. I managed to make two pages for my coffee reviews. One displaying all the reviews in a format similar to my homepage, and a rankings list. I was so happy when I first figured out how to add the background image I found… only to see that it applies it to the whole site. Then, I spent hours trying to change the image for my specific pages and as far as I can tell it’s not possible. I have to mess with the code and even with google I can’t get it to work. There is no easy way to do this through WordPress when it should just be a feature. I was excited to set this up for my major review categories and now I feel like it’ll be more of a chore to do without the ability to individually customize the backgrounds.
Another annoyance is that my coffee rankings list isn’t centered like my complete rankings list is. I’m not sure if it’s something with the embedment from my google sheets, or another thing entirely. I haven’t really had the energy to dig into this as the background defeat took the wind out of my sails.
Update 3:
So I went down a rabbit hole and I’ll either have to upgrade to the premium plan or use another hosting site to get things the way I want it. WordPress.com is very closed off and limiting. The personal plan doesn’t even allow the additional CSS option I need to make the background updates.
This isn’t a project that I want to spend the whole nine yards working on, so maybe that’s just how it is. My plan will be to continue writing posts, slowly creating the category/ranking pages to add to my header, and then maybe upgrading sometime in the future to get things the way I’d like. I know I originally wanted to make a search bar and drop down category section, but that’s far off my radar. The more content I have the more I’ll want to present it all in a nice bow. The double edged sword may be that I’ll be less inspired to write with the way things are now. The site has come a long way since I first started it, but I have my vision and want to see it come to fruition. I’t has just been a pain in my bootie getting there so far.
If this review was just for having a review blog I’d rank it very high. However, the process of creating and working towards my vision has been a slog for this website noob.
Rating: 397/1000
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