I've been changing my Ode body type settings over the past few days. I've switched fonts, sizes and line height.

I did take some inspiration from Rob Reed's Ode blog, especially on the line-height property in the css.

While I liked the Carme font I pulled from Google, it looked better on some devices (newer iPod Touch, systems running Linux) than others (older iPad, systems running Windows), and I wasn't crazy about the noticeable delay in text showing up on the screen while the client device pulled the font from Google.

So I went with Helvetica Neue, though I also like Arial and Verdana. Even plain sans-serif looks good. I might keep switching things up.

I still haven't yanked the Droid Sans Mono font I pulled from Google for code blocks. Since the rest of the type shows up on the page without delay, I don't think a late-blooming code font is much of a distraction. And I really like Droid Sans Mono.

The body type font size has been changing day to day. I went from 14px to 12px and now 13px.

I bumped the post headline font up six pixels to 22px. I could go bigger. I could go bold. Not just yet.

I spent much of yesterday fighting with WordPress to make it do what I want. Not having unfettered (or any) FTP access to the server didn't help.

Today I had a problem (caused by a previous experimental change) with my Ode site's RSS and fixed it in about two minutes. Before I started, I forked the theme by copying and re-dating its directory so I had a full backup. Then I removed the problematic line of code, and everything was as it should be.

Understanding how it works makes it easier to fix, modify, experiment and not lose your data in the process.

I'm not saying WordPress isn't a great system, but the simplicity of Ode is one of its strongest assets. Anything you know about HTML, CSS and Linux/Unix will help you. And Ode can help you learn about those things. Then you can apply that newfound knowledge directly to the rest of your work.

I was looking over old threads in the Ode forum and this one introduced me to Carme from Google Web Fonts.

I went to Google Web Fonts, searched for Carme and followed the instructions, calling an additional stylesheet (from Google) into my Ode theme and then calling the Carme in the Logic theme's own CSS.

I like it. It looks better on my Linux (Debian Wheezy with GNOME 3) desktop than it does on Windows 8 right now, so I'm not sure I'll stick with it. But for now I will.

It's funny. I was thinking about the last time one of my domains expired and whether or not I changed the contact e-mail address to something I actually check so such a thing (an expired domain, that is) wouldn't happen again.

But I didn't (change the contact e-mail address). And it did (the domain expired).

I renewed the domain, and a couple of others, one of which was set to expire a few days from now.

The domain on which this site lives is pretty much all the way back. Chances are DNS will work and you'll get the site, but it could be a day or so until some DNS servers catch up.

The moral of the story: Keep an eye on your domains.

• Make sure your contact e-mail addresses are up-to-date (and maybe filter that mail so you'll stand a better chance of finding it)

• Make a list of your domains, their expiration dates and where and how to renew them. Keep this in a list with the other important information about your web site.

• Make a habit of doing some web-site maintenance. Go through your site(s) and:

  1. Make sure all services you're offering are actually working

  2. Get rid of files and directories you no longer need

  3. Do regular backups and keep a backup archive (yearly, monthly, weekly ...)

  4. Check on any applications (like WordPress) that require a software update/upgrade.

  5. Watch for things like expiring domains.

Do you have any other webmasterly maintenance chores that belong on a list like this?

The next day: Google's DNS finally caught up, and I can see the site from my laptop that uses those DNS servers.

The more I see Rob Reed's new version of Ode's default Logic theme, the more I like it. I'm thinking of giving it a tryout on this site.

Ode is magical, all right. Click here to see all 110 posts in the blog on a single HTML page.

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