I can already tell that this particular entry is probably going to get me in trouble. So, let me sit down with a cup of hot chocolate and my comfortable Friday-night-slobbing-around-the-house clothing and just tell you like it is. You know, the kind of talks your mother used to have with you when you were too young and too stupid to understand that just because Aunt Bertha was really really fat didn't mean that you were allowed to come right up to her in front of her and her thirteen grandchildren to tell her that she was fat. On her birthday, no less.

So, say you write fairly regularly on a personal site for a couple of years, and you start picking up readers. Say you do something interesting and unusual with your site—say, making it skinnable. Then let's say that since your friends are fairly vocal and active in the open source community, you get the notion that maybe you're not the only person who would be interested in skinning a website. So what do you do? You make your code available, and you take a good bit of time and write up a tutorial to explain how it all works, and then you sit back, rather amused, to watch the results.

Oh, blast, we've gone from a hypothetical story into the meat of the situation in only two paragraphs. Oh, well. I never said I was the master of subtlety, did I?

Let me tell you—it's amusing. I never expected more than ten people to ever show an interest in skinning a website. While not extremely technical (case in point: I managed to do it), you have to admit, it's not something that should ever appeal to the regular Joe Schmoes who just want to put together a website so that they can post to it when they find something new and appealing on the web.

Now, here's the part where I get up from the computer and go bang my head against the nearest doorjamb: when the heck did this bizarre little idea for my site suddenly become the cool thing to do to a weblog?

Okay, okay, I admit it. It's flattering to check the site stats and see that people find the tutorial interesting and useful, and to get email from people who have managed to skin their own sites. But the converse is … amusing, to say the least.

It's hard to completely suppress a chuckle when I follow up on a referer and see someone writing along these lines about the tutorial: "But it's HARD. Why is the tutorial so long? Isn't there an easier way?"

(At which point I cock my head to the side, arch an eyebrow, and say to myself, "You want to do the equivalent of maintaining multiple websites, combined on a single site…and you want to do something that requires a combination of a server-side language and cookies… Let me get this straight: you want to have multiple, completely different layouts, and you want all this to be plugged into your site and working properly within fifteen minutes?")

Then, suddenly, it all comes back to me, and I remember why doing web design professionally restarted my collegiate antacid habit.

Oh, I dunno, I suppose I could probably go back and rewrite things to try to make it simpler. Cut it down to six or eight pages, take out all the commentary, and make it really dry, dull, and boring. (Like every other tutorial I've attempted to slog through.)

Don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing the people who are trying to learn something new, nor those who are willing to give things an honest try before they contact me. But there are some people who have contacted me in the past six months who have really and truly just wanted me to tell them how to do it—wanted to have the end result without putting in the time and effort to understand what it takes to get there. There comes a point when you want to email these people back and say, "Look. If you don't understand what the tutorial's talking about, maybe it's not the right thing to try to do with your site?"

(With that paragraph, I've probably scared off at least six people and generated at least one hateful post on someone else's weblog. Life's terrible, isn't it?)

But now, suddenly, it appears that this skinning your weblog thing has become a Cool Thing To Do To Your Site, and as a result we've moved past the people who are probably technically ready to handle this sort of thing and moved into the realm of the folk who are simply doing it because someone else they've spotted in the Great Weblog Herd[tm] is doing it.

(Note to self: "great weblog herd." I need to remember this. There's got to be an entry in this somewhere.)

Just so you know: my doorjamb hates you. As a result of the severe abuse it's encountered lately, it has presented me with a list of demands, not the least of which is that I am to cease and desist smacking my forehead into it at regular intervals. Would you believe it wants a masseuse, too? Something about compensation for pain and suffering. Outrageous, I tell you, outrageous.

Just for all this, I think I'll go back and rewrite my tutorial in Tagalog. My original idea, Icelandic, is probably not obscure enough.

…and for the guy who wanted to know why I was such a priss and wouldn't write code for him: I tell you what. You come over and feed my spouse and take care of my life for a day or two, and I'll write your code for you.

In the meanwhile, you're stuck with Tagalog.

For the rest of you, good luck with the tutorial. I hope you find it useful. Just go easy on the list of demands when you email me, eh?