The last week has been very intense because I spent most of it hacking WP and taking up a crash course on CSS. The best way to do both of this is to reverse engineer whats already available and that's exactly what I have been doing – took up an existing WP theme and reversed engineered it to make it look like how I wanted. Also spent time digging up old WP forum questions to see if I can get a few functionalities incorporated by hacking the PHP files. Guess what – I suceeded! And here is what I observed:

• The code ain't very difficult if you have the time for it. Yes, time and patience is very important and most newbies who post on the WP forums are like me – no knowledge of PHP but not total idiots either. Its nothing but logic and takes a while..
• Setbacks happen when you least expect it. You got to learn to maintain your balance and try your best not to pull your hair. More than once the page I was working on looked really messed up and I had to spend an entire day trying to fix the problem. But in the end, I suceeded, so it all seems worthwhile.
• A forum is like the Bible. You just need to know how to search, how to read only what you want to and how not to get carried away with too many links. Thats exactly what happened to me initially cos I wasn't really sure what I was looking for and I thought see some past queries on the forums will help me get started. On the contrary, this threw me off-track. Its only when I actually got my hands dirty did the queries and replies make sense.

Well, all is not over yet. Now that I got WP to do what I want it to, I have to make it look pretty. And that means more CSS. So here I come….

PS: The result of all this will be seen on my new website