junesix

dreamer,
Sushubh’s StyleCompetition link has a number of premade templates. Some other WP users have made generous donations of WP templates they have made as well – search this forum. Instead of trying to start out with an advanced blog, why not make a few posts and design as you go? You’ll be able to focus on writing good content and learn a little HTML, CSS, and PHP along the way and that’s always A Good Thing.
However, if you have no time or desire to do even a little customizing work, I’m not sure if WP is the best thing. Blogger ( https://www.blogger.com ) lacks WP’s customizability and extensive features but may be better if you want to start writing right away.

Ah, here is where CSS shines. Instead of using premade buttons, you can style your category list to look like buttons. Instead of a unique button image for each category, output the category names as a list and style them with your button’s background.
Reference the last section of ALA’s Taming Lists:
https://www.alistapart.com/articles/taminglists/
and ALA’s Sliding Doors of CSS
https://www.alistapart.com/articles/slidingdoors/

Take that blog-header.php section out of your include file and use this statement instead for calling the include module
<?php include(ABSPATH . 'path/filename.php'); ?>

By archiving do you mean backing up your mySQL database? Or do you mean accessing old posts? If you’re referring to the former, there are posts describing how to back up the mySQL DB. If the latter, WP doesn’t archive posts per se because everything is built using the mySQL data. When you call an “archived” post, WP retrieves the content from your DB and dumps it into the appropriate template.

Check your Permalink structure in options and verify that against the .htaccess. I noticed that when I tried https://gudlyf.com/archives/category/general , it worked, while your default permalink path of https://www.gudlyf.com/index.php?cat=1 did not.

I believe you’re looking for this, care of the amazing Scriptygoddess.
https://www.scriptygoddess.com/archives/2004/06/06/showhide-comments-in-wordpress-ii/

Looking forward to it. Thanks.

Excellent design. Glad to see another blogger from my alum.
A small suggestion.. IMHO I think the navi text color would be better if the hover was dark blue instead of black. Maybe the same shade of darker blue used in your logo? The switch from white to black is a little jarring.

…but I thought orange was the new black! ??

Is this tag still on the drawing board?

If you set your Reading Options to only show posts from the last 3 or 4 days, wouldn’t that almost be the same? Granted it’s not the same as specifying Sun or Wed, but it should keep your front page fresh.

This solution requires a bit of JS
https://www.ads-software.com/support/3/5661

Which function are you using to generate the links? If you’re using the get_links_list function, you can add a parameter value to make the links list by ID or updated.
https://wiki.www.ads-software.com/get_links_list

By default, new categories won’t show up until you post to them. If you’re using WP 1.2, change this line in your index.php to show the empty categories as well.
In line 71
<?php wp_list_cats(); ?>
to
`<?php wp_list_cats(‘hide_empty=0’); ?>

Nice site. I would agree with pretty much what’s been said here.. two splash screens is quite a bit of work to get through and the white text on black is a bit harsh on the eyes. Why not incorporate your content on splash #2 somewhere on your blog? And as for the text, try a shade of light grey instead. Your readers will thank you ??