For some insane reason, I got the itch to try and update the blog with the recently released latest and greatest “software hooha-ery”:http://wordpress.org/. After about two hours of back and forth between looking up the new api changes and updating my custom-built-with-php-and-cheezits site, it was obvious what a gigantic pain in the ass this process was going to be.
This was of course not the fault of the updated software (which handled the core upgrade quite well; Kudos to the Wordpress folks for that), but rather my lack of foresight. Instead of taking the time to make plugins as simple wrappers for all of the default template hacking and custom sql I use, I just stuck it in the default templates and left it at that. No fuss at at the time. I love writing elegant code as much as the next person (I do it for a living), but I’m also a pragmatist. This certainly isn’t rocket science and it’s just a blog, so I really didn’t care too much about it.
That was two years ago. Of course now that I want to upgrade, I have to remember why I wrote a particular function in a particular spot, which makes the itch to not only upgrade the backend software, but to retire the hedgehog that much greater. I also used the backend to store data in unintended ways, which served my needs at the time, but is biting me now since I have hundreds of posts that look kind of funky with this new version.
So what should have initially been a 30 minute upgrade will most likely be a two weekend or more project that is entirely dependent on how much time, energy and interest I’ll still have by the end of it. Welcome back to the upgrade cycle. I’m seriously considering going static and ascii for the whole thing (how’s that for cutting off your nose to spite your face).
