Why I’m not updating Sites that Soar!
Jul 20th, 2009 | By Ais | Category: News
My book, Sites that Soar!, works with WordPress 2.9.2 and Branford Magazine 2.6 and earlier.
I love those early versions of Branford Magazine, and I offer them as free downloads, here and at BranfordMagazine.com.
They’re the themes that I use at almost all of my own websites.
However, I’ve been increasingly troubled by later changes in the theme. The July 2009 update — Branford Magazine 3.0 — is a good example.
This morning, when I visited the website of Branford Magazine’s creator to take a look at Branford Magazine 3.0, I kept running into problems. They looked like this screenshot:
(I added the red arrow, pointing to where it says, “something has gone wrong with WordPress or a plugin.”)
The problem could be his WordPress installation, plugins that he’s using, or his theme. I don’t know.
If the designer’s own website is having problems… that could be a problem for others, too.
My Sites that Soar! book does not include instructions for Branford Magazine versions after 2.6. I recommend only the earlier versions.
So, the third edition (2009) will probably be the final version of my book, Sites that Soar!
There’s no point in further updates unless something radically changes at WordPress. (If it does, I may update the book. I’m not sure.)
I love the versions of Branford Magazine that I’m using. I’m delighted with how easy WordPress is, and how well it maintains my websites… no matter how large they are.
And, I especially like that the earlier versions of Branford Magazine and all versions of WordPress are free.
So, the reason I’m not updating Sites that Soar (the book) is because there’s no point to an update. I’m still very happy with the versions of Branford Magazine that I wrote about in that book.
I also tried and failed to get B3.0 running. Not enough in there to justify the heartache, if it even works then.
Hi Dwight,
Those are my sentiments, as well.
The original Branford Magazine borrowed heavily from the (free) Mimbo theme and the (not free) Revolution theme. As long as Mr. Oeser relied on other people’s coding, he seemed to do okay.
However, when he tried to improve them… some of his changes worked, and others weren’t successful at all.
I was especially disappointed when a later version of Branford Magazine forced existing users to change how they managed homepage graphics. (One of my websites has over 500 illustrated articles, and I wasn’t about to change images on a site of that size, to rotate them in my Featured column!)
I’ve included many of the best improvements in my own version of Branford Magazine. It’s free, at the Download tab at my website, BranfordMagazine.com. (I’d originally purchased rights to that domain name, to make it easier for people to find my book. Michael Oeser’s website for his Branford Magazine theme is Der-PRiNZ.com.)
But, for those of us who aren’t code geeks and have businesses to run, Branford 3.0 doesn’t seem useful to me. So, I’m not bothering with a new version of the book.
Thanks for your comment, Dwight. I appreciate hearing that it’s not just me, having trouble with the newer Branford versions.
Cheerfully,
Aisling