The frustrations of switching over to new blog software have finally kicked in, and I’ve now learned that I will simple have to start again with php and learn how to code things up with it, the way I learned with all those tags in Movable Type.

I’m halfway to achieving my goal through template manipulations alone: that is, having a display of the last ten posts of one category show up not inline, but only in the sidebar. I have managed to suppress the posts from that category from the inline text — the main blog, I mean — but I have not yet mastered The Famous Loop enough to construct a version of it that will function in my sidebar without crashing terribly. I think I shall have to work it down by way of step-by-step removals of things and see what works… or, failing that, build one up from scratch, step by step.

But it’s almost set up! It’s coming soon… and really, given all the really cool features that WordPress offer me, I have no strong reason to complain. I still love the software, limitations and all. The limitations are like the strictures of a Wagnerian tone row: they allow me some limits to the otherwise unbounded space in which I can play, and also help to shape my ideas of what rules I would like to break next.

Suffice it to say my blog is still definitely under reconstruction, and probably will be for a while. Now, off to meddle with that Loop.

UPDATE: It’s fifteen minutes later, and I managed to find the right loop on a help page and copy and paste it. Hackers must be like poets, if not like painters… they must be the ultimate code thieves. Or borrowers. Or, in the case of open source, lenders and givers.

There’s only one word for that, and it starts with ‘k’ and ends in ‘ewl’.

UPDATE 2: Last night, just before my connection went down, I got the micopost sideblog working. The main RSS feed includes the microposts as well as the normal inline ones, but I’ve set up a secondary feed for only microposts, in case anyone prefers my links to my blather.