I’m plodding through Chapter 10 of Using WordPress now. The chapter is on one of my favorite WP topics—using WordPress for things other than blogs (sites, collaboration, project management). I might be over-thinking this chapter, but it’s going well. As I was researching/double-checking some facts on using WordPress for websites, I came across a really great post on converting existing websites to WordPress. David’s method is simple, elegant, and one that I hadn’t thought of trying. I did some more research and am pretty well convinced that his method is one that I will have to include in the book.
This made me stop and think. I had to pause for a moment and take in the moment of realizing how often we are standing on the shoulders of other people as we are writing our books. No, I don’t mean the invention of writing or computers, etc (not that either of those aren’t good examples) I mean the people who have done so much work to solve the problems that I’m writing about right now.
Turning a WordPress blog into a website with a static front page? That didn’t happen overnight. Editing and moving categories around. Widgetized themes where I can drag and drop pretty complex chunks of code at my whim. These are big things. I spend hours reading and re-reading forum posts, The Codex, and other resources to make sure I have it right. I know—darn it—that I have an error I’m going to need to fix when the chapter comes back from Technical Editing. At least I know about it ahead of time.
So, I’m taking this moment, as I get ready to condense more information I’ve just read on numerous websites, to thank all the shoulders that I’m standing on. There are far too many to mention (much less remember), but if you’ve written about a solution to a WordPress problem then I’m just thanking you now. Because even if I haven’t read your post already, I probably will at some point soon.
So, thank you.