The target for the week was to create a new YouTube video, the first in the series on Maintenance Planning and a podcast episode of the same name. I achieved the first, just, but failed on the podcast episode.

It was the longest video to date, 23 minutes, it took a while to produce, longer than it should, but this was down to a disrupted schedule. Normally my schedule is completely blank, and I can create the video and podcast efficiently. This time I was disrupted by going to our office in Breda, NL and then a networking event and one-day conference this week, and then I lost time driving back to my home on Wednesday morning.

The video also required selecting a new music track, I’m keeping with the group TrackTribe. Rather than sticking to Jazz I changed genre to Riff Rock, so now I have two ear worms rattling round my brain, I wonder how long it will take before my brain has jettisoned the previous track so that I couldn’t even hum it.

The networking event and conference was interesting. I used it to ask whether people had heard of my website, and I would say more than half had not. At the end of the scale one person actively sought me out and insisted that we posed together for a photo. Another person, when they found out I was the author of Maximo Secrets, just said “wow, wow, wow, it’s so good, I didn’t know who wrote it”. On reflection, I thought, why would people recognise me if I have no picture of myself on my website. The other point I learned is that I must start marketing myself, there is still a big audience out there who have not heard of the website.

I didn’t get to use PowerDirector 365 or the Lavalier microphone, I used the same workflow as before, it was safer to do this than risk not publishing the video. I must try to correct this on the next video, but as I am on holiday next week, I will be at least one video behind, so a more reasonable target will be to try and move to the new video editor and microphone by the end of October.

I had a eureka moment during the week playing with a Full Site Editing theme and creating a new template for posts. The template was designed to show a post the full width of a laptop screen. When I compared the size of an image on my current website versus another website with the new wide template the difference was that the image was twice the height and twice the width, nearly four times the size it is on the current website. The comparison was made on an iPad with a tape measure, so not entirely accurate, but you get the point.

The difference was incredible the images were so big and clear. This will make a massive difference to my existing articles, and it made me realise that I needed to change theme sooner rather than later. What I can’t understand is how it has taken over 5 years for me to think that I could be having a better display of my text, nor why someone over those years has not suggested to make the articles easier to read.

I investigated a few more themes taking the advice of Tanya that the later FSE themes would avoid the submenu issue. I settled on the theme Pendant, a theme from Automattic that would still provide support from the Happiness Engineers, an important point for a one-man band with no budget.

On Saturday I went into fearless theme switching mode and an hour later I had swapped back to my theme Rowling. It was enough time to realise that the submenu background colours, and text didn’t suffer the same issue as I had seen with the Russell theme. The issue this time was that I couldn’t work out how to make the menu or the cover image stretch right to the edges of the screen. The result from the Pendant theme was a big black margin around the top menu and between the menu and cover image which looked awful.

I didn’t have this problem with the trial I did on the Russell theme, I could get the header to look like the current website, but I can’t remember the order of the blocks I used. It has made me realise that what I need to do is use another website to work out how to structure the heading so that I have a template to follow when I do eventual move my website to that theme. I made some comment about this in the community and Tanya rescued again with a little video which shows that if you click the Header you can change to a different style with the option Replace Header, that might allow you to settle on something closer to what you want.

Using the Full Site Editing (FSE) themes is much harder than picking a classic theme and going with whatever it provides you. Such is the penalty you need to pay for having total freedom to layout the pages however you wish. It is a learning journey you need to take yourself on and my recommendation to anyone looking to undertake this journey is don’t do it on your live website, use a free website to make the mistakes that you will inevitably make as you try different things to shape the website the way you want it, your FSE learning journey. Earlier in the year I had tried this out on another website and thought I knew enough about templates and template parts and the navigation to attempt this on Maximo Secrets, not so, perhaps I have only made the first step of many on my learning journey.

Donna in the community asked whether I had settled on a theme. I think my response was a bit vague, but the answer is no. I am trying to use the Pendant theme, my current website does not have a static home page, something that I will address over time. Basically, my goal is to replace what I have today in the Rowling theme, with a FSE theme which will eliminate the side bar for the widgets and go full width for the posts and pages. It doesn’t seem a difficult task, it needs to look the same, but wider. Whether the Pendant theme will let me get there time will tell. Anyway, I will certainly be trying different things during the week to see how to achieve a full width header.

My objectives for week 42 are nothing like what they normally are, it is what I can do from a hotel room resting up before going out to dinner:

• Experiment with changing header styles on the Pendant theme to try and achieve a full-width header.
• Check out and order the studio lighting I will need for the winter months
• Check out the new iPhone capabilities for videos and how I might use these in a studio setting. I’m thinking that a video from two angles might give a better result, a webcam can only be directly in front, but it will mean that I will need to figure out an alternate method for an autocue, perhaps using my iPad.

I am setting myself a goal of being on a new FSE based theme at the end of this week.