annoyance

I like Independent Publisher, the WordPress theme you’re looking at, but I’m not crazy about it. I prefer Davis, the theme I was using before — but Davis just underwent an update that undid the custom CSS I was using to tweak it. Davis does something that many themes do, something indefensible and unforgivable: it renders all block quotes in italics. This is stupid, because sometimes such quotations contain italics of their own, which are wiped out by the CSS. Typically, it’s possible to use the Custom CSS feature in WordPress to fix things like that, and in the past I did that — but this new update has made the theme impervious to such changes. No matter what CSS I add, the theme ignores it. So I am back to Independent Publisher, which is … okay. Fine, I guess.

The whole situation is yet another reminder of how frustrating life in the indie web world can be if you don’t possess the tools you need to Do It Yourself. I really really don’t have the time to learn how to write my own WordPress theme … but that’s probably what I should do. Sigh.

Of course, another alternative would be to leave WordPress altogether for an alternative platform, but I suspect that will have to wait until I retire. Because that is a big job.