Been playing around with blog configurations this evening, thinking it’s time for another update on appearances, and eventually a complete revamping under the hood. The latter will need more time to put together, might make a autumn/winter project out of it. In the meantime I’ve been looking at newer themes to run that fit what I’m doing. This one has been nice, but I might do better with something more modern, will continue my wordpress adventures with fresh eyes tomorrow.
Blogging
Time For A Lil’ Makeover
Made some changes to the blog tonight! Replaced the RSS plugin that I was using for fetching my Mastodon posts with a more proper plugin, plus I played with the look of the site. I decided to lighten the colors up a bit since we have a Dark Mode to use as an alternative. 🙂 There are a couple more things I’d like to implement and change, but this will do for now.
I did get through another chapter of BloodRayne Betrayal: Fresh Bites, been playing it here and there in my spare time. Stopped on Chapter 9 tonight. This has to be one of the hardest Metroidvanias I’ve ever played hands down. I died so many times trying to get past pools of acid without missing platforms. It makes the Shantae series look like child’s play by comparison.
Some Changes Be A Comin’
I’ve begun looking into doing a redesign of the website, already downloaded some new templates and have already played with customising them. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for quite awhile now, and I want to make it look good on as many devices as possible. I sometimes check my blog on smaller devices, like my tablet, laptop, etc and want to look into making it look nice on as many platforms as possible. Spring has sprung, and it’s time to give this place a bit of a facelift. I might play with it a bit more tomorrow, but don’t expect any changes overnight.
Well I haven’t fucked anything up yet
I’m almost done setting up the new blog. I’ve decided to keep the same template but make some tweaks to the header images (lots of new ones!). Once this goes live you guys will hopefully be happy with the load speed. It is light years faster than BlueHost. I won’t be turning certain features back on (such as gallery, the twitch page, etc) until I go over some other new plugins I’ve discovered, but for the most part everything necessary to run the site is in place. I’ll have one more website to port over, sadly that will have to wait until the weekend most likely just to make sure I have plenty of time allotted to give it proper care; once I start something it’s pretty difficult for me to stop. I think I’ll read up on how to install MediaWiki, or get some animation done. Been a few days since I’ve last touched SFM.
If anyone is curious to see the new site in its beta phase I can share a link. Just make contact with me and I’ll put you on the waiting slacking list. I would be interested in knowing how fast it loads with more than a couple people accessing it and maybe some other potential discoveries.
Once I have all of this taken care of I’m thinking of writing up my own tutorial for setting up a wordpress install. It isn’t that difficult, but some of the things I had to do were not all that well documented; taking a small bit of guesswork to get resolve certain things. For example I still find it strange that CentOS 7 didn’t come with firewalld installed by default? O_o
Auf wiedersehen Gutenberg
In a recent update to WordPress (starting with 5.0 IIRC) they changed the text editor style to a new version called Gutenberg that changes the way you write your posts. This was being tested in earlier versions of WordPress as a mere plugin, out of curiocity I took a quick look at it during that period and went back to the regular style at the time just because I didn’t have much time to scope it out. Fast forward to the 5.0 update and now everyone has to use it (unless you install the classic editor plugin). I was tempted to go back to the classic editor myself, but then I decided to test myself by writing some posts with it.
Upon immediate glance I can tell this is designed for posting via smart devices… that’s strike 1. It’s great to include more devices so you can give writers a chance to post their thoughts or content from almost anywhere, but at the same time you shouldn’t neglect your other audience that holds a powerful tool that most mobile users sorely lack, a well sized keyboard to type on.
Gutenberg’s most praised feature is the “block” system… because this is 2018 and blocks are a thing. Instead of having a small toolbar and clicking an icon, like blockquoting something or posting an image, you click a plus and choose if you want an image, a quote, hell even a paragraph! You know, something you could write NATURALLY! Again, it makes more sense on mobile… but on PC that’s just an added step. Though not to completely bash it I do like being able to move paragraphs and other blocks around if I feel the need to arrange something.
I’ve mainly gone back to using the classic editor plugin. I like some of the ideas they’ve put into the new editor, but the inconveniences outweigh the new features. I’ll stick with the classic editor for now.
Open Thread
I spent the day doing some Serious Sam gaming as part of my hiatus from The Elder Trolls. I also looked into adding mods for those particular games, then went off looking at mods for anything and everything in my games library.
I also helped my brother with his blog the rest of the way. It looks real nice and he’s happy with it. 😀 If you want to have a look see here’s the link. He makes some awesome pixel art in Garry’s Mod. I’ll also be helping him setup some other things in the near future. He wants to start YouTubing, so I’ll be showing him around the cold wasteland that is the internet and make sure no one mugs him. He’s young and innocent. Me? Not so much… I can impart some questionable wisdom onto him.
Finally had a proper weekend
I didn’t get to go out and treat myself to anything, but I did relax quite a bit. Banning asshats from my servers, the usual skyrim and setting up an email address and a blog for someone. They’re new to blogging and I can tell they’re going to be needing quite a bit of advice. But hey, it’s always a bit bumpy when you’re starting something new.
I also did some shopping. 😀 I have some paint and straps coming in the mail for my semi secret Halloween project. I needed to get more blue metallic testors paint for my mask, and also opted to get some red metallic. It’s been fun working on it, I might even expand the costume a bit more next year. This mask looks too nice to use just once. Unfortunately I probably won’t share public pictures because it does expose quite a bit of my face. :v
I should probably get some sleep. I have a long day tomorrow and it starts early. I’ll definitely be taking my Laptop for some fun lunch time shenanigans.