Why does the Ant-Like Persistence blog look strikingly different today? I did not want it to look different today but it does. I will explain why it looks different.
This blog is hosted using WordPress. WordPress uses what are called “themes”. The theme defines the layout of the page, and it defines color schemes and fonts. It defines whether there are multiple columns, and whether there are menus at the top or bottom or sides. One of the powerful things about WordPress is that if you like, you could change from one theme to another and see how things look. Later if you wish, you could change back to the previous theme and there would be no loss of any of the substantive content of the blog.
When I launched this blog five years ago, I selected a theme called “Techtra” made by somebody called CyberChimps.
Within the last few days, I chose to migrate my web hosting from a “shared hosting” platform to a “dedicated hosting” platform. Shared hosting costs less money but you are sharing a physical machine with many other customers. With dedicated hosting, you have your own dedicated physical machine. It costs a bit more per month but there are many advantages to having dedicated hosting.
But a really big disadvantage to the migration is that somehow the new hosting platform has broken the Techtra theme. This might have something to do with the version of PHP or the version of Apache on the new machine.
Unfortunately CyberChimps no longer supports the Techtra theme. So it’s not as though I could go to them to get an updated version of the theme or support for this new hosting platform.
At some point I will find the time to click around and experiment with versions of PHP (version 5.6? version 7.0? version 7.2? version 7.3?) and versions of Apache (version 2.2? version 2.4?) to see if I can find a combination that will once again support the Techtra theme. Or maybe I will give up and select some new theme and fiddle with it until the widgets and menus and columns and fonts and colors are more or less the way they were before.
Until then, dear readers, I thank you for your patience during this time when the blog will be looking very different from the way it usually looks.
Congrats on the move. This theme looks OK to me.
With the new set up, can you fix your email discussion system (PCT-Digest), which produces unreadable emails. Thanks
If the PCT-Digest system is not to your liking, I assume you would be eligible for a refund…
Your unfortunate migration problem highlights how frustrating WordPress can be. It relies upon third-party plug-ins that are often suddenly abandoned by their creators, causing you to drop everything and spend days or weeks and sometimes much longer (and possibly thousands of dollars), desperately trying to find a hopefully viable solution.