A few weeks ago, I got an email from this guy who lives in Yelapa, a tiny little town south of Puerto Vallarta that is only accessible by boat. Brad is a gringo ex-pat who has fully divested himself of the US and Yelapa is now his permanent home. He shares a palapa with his mexican wife and children.
Brad runs a website called Palapainyelapa.com. It turns out he had seen my website and my glowing report of Word Press and he had decided to take the plunge and convert his site to Word Press. His current site is a strictly Dreamweaver affair and Brad has little to no actually underneath-the-hood coding experience. and Word Press’ default installation is easy enough to get around not knowing any html or css programming. But as you begin to want to modify things, that’s when it gets ugly, especially if you try to edit your themes with Dreamweaver.
So Brad, shot me an email asking for some help and even offered to put Marcia and I up in Yelapa for the weekend, in exchange for some much need tech support. I of course jumped at the chance, I’ve never been to Yelapa and we both could use an extended weekend. But I couldn’t find the time, a few weekends went by with always something else to do and since I usually work Saturdays, it was doubly hard. And so this past Monday, Brad calls me up and asks if he can come to me, on Tuesday, for some tech help. Of course I agreed. Tuesday comes and brad shows up, of course I’ve completely forgotten about his appointment, because I suck at writing things down.
So Brad and I spent a few hours going through his word press install, hacking his chosen theme (the wonderful 3 column Kubrick) and how to best port his old content over to the new system. It was a great couple of hours, teching out with a fellow nerd. Brad even rocks an iBook. First one I’ve seen since I’ve been in Mexico. It was also great to hear about Brad’s eventual move to Mexico and falling in love with a traditional Mexican woman from a small town. Truly an inspirational story. I was flipped out as we sat in my modernesque a/c equipped office and Brad was telling me stories of living in a palapa, open to the elements on all four sides and having to unplug all his gear every night to lock it up. what a life. and i thought I was roughing it.
Well, needless to say we got his site up and running. He still has the old one up while he ports his journal entries over to the new system, but things are looking great. Hopefully one of these days, soon, I can get over to Yelapa to say hi. I’ve always heard great stories about Yelapa and can’t wait to go.
Go give Brad a shout out for me and if you ever need a place to stay in Yelapa, Brad handles internet bookings for some of the more beautiful local mexican rental houses.
