Issues with Ikarus
I mentioned previously in the “Advertising platform problems put me off working on the site” post that I was having issues with the Ikarus Theme.
Ikarus theme not working
Basically since the update to the latest WordPress version 2.8 (2.8.4 at time of writing) the Ikarus theme is basically broken in several areas and still months after this has happened there does not seem to be any working fixes coming from the developer of the theme. I actually tried to comment on the developer’s site about this and my comments are blocked (for one reason or another), anyway I’ve had to reluctantly abandon using this theme as a result. This has thought me a few different lessons.
- Firstly, it’s important that for whatever theme you choose that either support is readily available to upgrade the theme or the theme itself is simple enough that it’s easily modified to suit new versions of WordPress. Better yet would be if the theme is written in such a way that changes to WordPress and Internet Browsers are likely to have a low probability of breaking the functionality of the theme.
- Fancy Theme = More Issues? Related to the first point. I really liked the Ikarus Theme as it had a lot of different options and functionality. But this seems like it might also be its Achilles heel. Even the developer of the theme months after the initial problems were reported with WordPress 2.8 (and it’s not fully compatible with IE8 either) is unable to fix it, so for webmasters like me who just have limited knowledge of the coding side of things it’s next to impossible to change the Theme when these complicated problems arise. After arriving home and getting back into ‘work mode’ after travelling for the previous month (I really have to stop going on trips!), I thought ok I need to change this theme fast. I picked the thematic theme http://themeshaper.com/ . It lacks a lot of the ‘bells and whistles’ that Ikarus had but it still feels powerful enough. It also works smoothly. The result is my website looks quite bare looking now, but one can still navigate around quite easily. And right now my main concern is that my website is up and running normally once again. Meanwhile, I’m going to continue to see what I can do with this theme and also see if they are other themes out there that I feel would suit where I want to take www.makingapokerwebsite.com.
- Have a backup. Once I started having issues with Ikarus, I had no secondary theme ready and waiting to put in it’s place. This was a bad mistake, in fact this lesson can be applied to many areas of life in general, particularly in regards to your career and business. Basically the old phrase ‘Not to have all your eggs in one basket’ comes to mind, anyway…. before I get too side-tracked, what I’m basically saying is that the smart thing to do would be to have at least 2 themes that you are satisfied with available for use with your WordPress blog, then if for whatever reason your default one becomes broken, then hopefully one of your replacement themes will still work fine, and if and when your theme of choice is fixed then of course you could select it once again if you so wished.
Theme support should not be overlooked
So… to surmise what I’m trying to get at here. Basically the theme you choose should not be just about its functionlity and ‘prettiness’, in fact if anything if the functionaility is very complicated it can prove a liability when it comes to adapting to changes. The level and availability of support for your theme is also very important, perhaps themes built and maintained by a community of enthusiasts might be an area well worth looking at, that way you are not reliant on any one person or company, and last but not least make sure you have a second if not a third and fourth theme ready to substitute for the times if and when your theme of choice no longer functions as expected.
