New Changes at CCP …
ByIf you’ve come to this site very long, you’ve probably noticed some fairly significant but cosmetic changes here at Church Communications Pro.
THE NEW THEME
The great thing about blogs, blogging, WordPress, the proliferation of free themes is that you can make significant tweaks to your website … in less than 24 hours if you wanted to.
A theme change has been on my agenda for quite some time. I made the jump to WordPress back in November-ish and loved what I saw in the K2 3-column theme. But K2′s time has run out here. I felt like the site lagged a lot (and some of you told me that). It may not be the theme’s fault, but I wanted something with less baggage.
Thus, entered one of Brian Gardner’s outstanding themes … with some pretty significant (read: time-consuming) customization to make it “my own.”
UPGRADING TO WORDPRESS 2.1
The other significant change here is one you won’t notice much at all, if any … after Jeff at ImageForth asked me about upgrading his blog to the new WordPress 2.1 Ella, I started investigating it. And wow, the new changes are awesome! The upgrade went smoothly (thankfully) and I’m already loving the new features.
And since I’m going to help him with his upgrade, and I’m doing the Using WordPress for Church Websites series, I thought it’d be a good time.
2007 CHRISTIAN BLOGGERS SURVEY
Thanks to all of you who participated in the 2007 Christian Bloggers Survey! Wow, what a response. We ended the month with approximately 360 responses. I’m hoping next year will be even bigger and better as we fine-tune the survey. We’ll be sharing the results with you ASAP.
Special thanks to Tim at Element Fusion who gave us the complimentary account to Icebrrg, their awesome online forms site in order to do the survey!
NO POSTS ON MONDAY
Nathan commented on my post yesterday saying he thought something was wrong because I didn’t post on Monday. Trust me, I was shocked too.
I thought I hit the wall or was on the verge of burnout … but I’m back. After 7 months of hard-core blogging, I will say that I’m going to reevaluate my posting schedule in the weeks to come. I’d like to focus on getting better content up here, then just content.
Of course, I can’t help it … I post on impulse and kind of like it that way. 
There! I said it … I’m an impulsive blogger … and obsessive too.
But a lot of my posts come from questions people have or ones I frequently am asked … or ones I just want to post an answer to. So please feel free to email me with a post suggestion, or question.
LINK LOVE
With the new look, I’ve folded my blogroll into a page instead of on my sidebar for one simple reason: it was one element of clutter that few people actually looked at. I’m very thankful for those who have exchanged links with me and want to honor that. You’ll still get a link on my Links page, but since putting links in posts is a lot better anyway, I’m going to list all of you in this post!
Ariel Vanderhorst
Armen’s Blog
Brenton Balvin
Counter Culture Blog
Derek Brown
Dr. Joe McKeever
Frank Johnson
Greg Atkinson / Church Video Ideas
Kevin Stilley
Mark Batterson
Micah Fries
Ministry Marketing Coach
Nathan Rice
Paul Peterson
Rodd Jefferson
Subverting Mediocrity
Theology Prof
Tim Stevens
William Reichart
Your Money 2 Keep
Want a link on CCP? Email me …
Cory-
I love the new theme. I’m a fanatic for changing my themes so I understand the need. I also love Brian Gardner’s work. I’m using one of his themes for a new project I’m working on. I’ll have to let you see it as soon as it’s ready.
great changes Cory. Very clean and moving the 3rd column to the left side makes it much easier to navigate. Fantastic upgrades.
Question, are you going to document the things you like about WP 2.1? That would be interesting.
Lastly, you forgot 1 small detail in your theme, and you may have done it on purpose, so if you did, just ignore this. The autodiscovery of your RSS feed in the head section. Something like:
oops, can’t embed code in a comment, Nathan, duh!
I’m sure you already know how to do it, but here’s a link:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/05/30/rss_autodiscovery
Guys, thanks for your kind comments!
Nathan, I stripped it out … but obviously I need to put that back in. I was trying to take out all the code that would put a strain on WP.
But evidentally, this is something I shouldn’t have done. I’ll get it fixed. Thanks!
BTW, Brian Gardner is a believer who attends Willow Creek. We’ve been chatting back and forth for a while after I discovered his themes.
Wow, I’ve seen that Vertigo Electrified theme before. It’s a good one. Cool to see that it’s a Christian who developed it
I see you removed the “subscribe to comments” plugin. I was going to mention that bug to you. I read about the bug a while back and how to fix it, but I can’t remember where I saw it. For some reason, I never had a problem with it on my blog. Oh well.
I would never have recognized this as his Blue Zinfandel theme. You changed the look significantly!
FWIW, the text entry box for subscribing to your newsletter extends beyond the border of the right sidebar on Firefox 2.0 for Mac. Looks fine in Safari.
Top job brother! Lookin’ good.
Brian Gardner’s and Chris Pearson’s themes are some of the best available, although currently I don’t use either. I found The Undersigned’s Water3 theme the easiest to work with as a beginner, and someone with very little clue altering code.
Keep it up, and get that article on upgrading WordPress up pronto!
Hey Cory! Thanks for the love! Right now I’m reading “The Blogging Church”! What a great read! I am reading it because I am blogging, and I am blogging because of you! Thanks bro!