About This Site
Vintage JoAnn is hosted by Lunar Pages. You can click on the image below to check them out.
The site is built on WordPress which is public domain blogging software. WordPress is available in 3 versions. If you don’t have a host you can add your blog to WordPress.com. You lose a little flexibility with this option but save some money. Wordpress.org allows you to download the core software to your host and build your own site around it. If you’re really into blogging and want to host other people’s blogs you can go with WordPress MultiUser.
The self-hosted version comes with 2 themes but there are thousands more to choose from. Vintage JoAnn uses “Loopy Blue” theme by David Span of MyBlogIt as it’s base theme. A theme defines the look and feel of the site. This includes things like font styles, page layout, colors, background images, etc. We have modified Loopy Blue to the point where it is no longer blue nor are the loopy background images present any more but the core page layout is there along with a few added templates which David graciously helped me with. David has also updated Loopy Blue to Loopy Rainbow.
WordPress also makes it easy for people to extend the functionality with “plug-ins”. Don’t worry – you don’t need to be a software genius to write a plug-in. There are probably at least a half-dozen already out there and availble for free or minimum cost to do what you want to do. Vintage JoAnn currently uses 3 plug-ins in addition to the ones WordPress provides as standard. All-in-one-SEO helps keep our message consistent to the search engines. We also use a plug-in for our RSS & Email feeds by Feedburner. Our picture gallery is created using a plug-in called Lazy-K-Gallery by Korey Atterbury.
While WordPress was designed as a blogging platform you could easily design an entire site around it and not even include a blog, it is that flexible. The book, WordPress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson, was a tremendous help and this website would not exist without it. I highly recommend this book to anyone even thinking of creating their own website. Find out more on Lisa’s personal blog, Just A Girl in the World, or go to her business site if you want first class help creating your site. It’s just amazing what her group has done with WordPress to create some killer sites.
WordPress For Dummies, by Lisa Sabin-Wilson
We still have a few pages from our old site to merge into the new Vintage JoAnn and then we’ll look at adding some new features. If you have any questions or comments feel free to email me – rick “at” vintagejoann.com.
by Email