BrainWyrms

I have been looking around for a while for a good wordpress theme that would allow me to have most post fragments on the landing page.  I played around with one, gridblog, that was extremely plain and simplistic.  I kind of liked that though, as it plain and simplistic sense of style.  [cough cough] But when I ended up having to hack the theme in order to get the plugins to work, and again to get the front page to show snippets of the posts.  That just didn’t work for me.  I started using wordpress because I do not want to waste the time that it would take for me to learn PHP well enough to code my own CMS and then to take the time to actually do the design, coding, testing, etc.  I wanted something more versitile than my setup, deadjournal via javascript output.  So hacking a theme to barely function was not acceptable.

I have three different versions of ZinMag installed right now: Futura, Redux, and Remedy.  Besides detesting the color scheme on Redux, I was having a rough time figuring out how to setup the themes.  I would activate it and look at all the empty boxes and wonder what I was doing wrong.  Then I found ZinMag Remedy.  Remedy comes with a special Options page that exposes all of the power inside.  It makes it almost easy.

And then I found the *.pdf instructions for setting up the Remedy theme, and after that I was flying along.  Nevermind the fact that I probably could have had Futura or Redux working if I’d read the instructions.  The only problem I was having was related to the images that are supposed to show up in the slider thing and the sidebar thing.  I was having a real hit or miss issue with them.  Sometimes I could get one of the images to show up and other times it would disappear.  But that was the only one that worked.  Nothing else was showing up.

That was when I noticed that my Google Analytics stat tracking was showing that BrainWyrms had gone from my best day ever (November 25 with 17 hits) to zero.  I slapped myself in the head and realized I hadn’t ported the code into the footer, so Analytics wasn’t getting any signals.  Yeah… the footer.php file has a warning message about busting copyright or something and then a bunch of code-y looking stuff.  Here, take a look at it:

<?php /* WARNING: This file is protected by copyright law. To reverse engineer or decode this file is strictly prohibited. */
$o=”QAAAJztjbnEnZGtmdHQ6JWRrYgIFZnUlOTsoAUA5DQ4ODQ4Asw4AsCAIDQ0Com5jOiVhaGhzYgKADQ0NAAAhZGh3fjwnOzh3b3cnYmRvAAJoJ2Nmc2IvIF4gLjw4OQGEZQAEa2hgbmlhaC8gaWZqYgGkZXUAACg5DSc7ZidvdWJhOiVvc3MAAHc9KChzaHdwd3NvYmpidCkEAmRoaih1AKBjfiglJzkgVQCyJwgAUFcnUwIBIDsoZjknJ0NidG4BAGBpYmMnZX4E3nBiZW9odHNuAwRpYGBiYmwFEgSRUGJlJ08BgydAvxABkSAEsg8BDvMAqQ9wDcJwd1gPcy8uPCcAQDg5DTsoZWhjfgCBb3NqazknMAANJwARAGI=”;eval(base64_decode(”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”));return;?>

I’m sure it’s just a bunch of bull.  Probably a stupid rotate the letters by 5 or some such.  But, my problem is that when I pasted the Analytics script into the end of the file it did not work.  I can’t say I was surprised, just disappointed.  So then I went poking around, trying to find the file that said < /body > in it.

I wasn’t able to find that.  Maybe I’m being stupid, but…  What I did find was really useful and kind of made me a little cheesed off at the instruction *.pdf.  The Remedy theme is hard-coded to only accept *.jpg files.  I personally prefer to stick with *.png files, so I had been resizing images and saving them as *.pngs and shockingly they were not working.

I still don’t know why the rss-headphones icon keeps disapearing.  I’m starting to think that it is a DreamHost/FireFox issue.  I’m not in love with either one anymore.

Now I just need to start writing and posting more so that all the little boxes are filled with new and wonderful content more frequently.  Yeah.  Oh, well, and I want to figure out how to change the bit that currently says “My Sponsors” and “Video of the Day” to say something else.

Actually, I just remembered something else.  I did have to hack this theme to get the supposedly easy AdSense bit to work.  That wasn’t too hard, considering I found and fixed that while trying to hunt down where the Analytics code should go.  So, while I am not too happy about having to fix this theme too, at least now that I have, I AM happy with it.