Why I Chose WordPress

I have had a somewhat infamous love-hate relationship with WordPress over the years. Although I was virtually an early adopter of the CMS, I have found myself using and dropping it in direct relation to the stability of the admin panel. However, WP development now takes up a significant portion of my workload and it was therefore a logical decision to get intimate with it for my geeky blog.

The advantages over my normal blog engine of choice (Habari) are as follows:

  • Easy upgrades for both the core and plugins
  • Easier to extend and adjust (this is not a criticism of Habari which is as extendible as WordPress, rather a reflection on my ability based on the age of WP’s base code… yes, I am old skool)
  • Can drop widgets and plugins in without having to worry about coding them myself; this is largely because of…
  • …a larger user base (beneficial with support queries and ready-to-roll code)

Of course, the advantage for you guys (a large proportion of whom use WP yourselves) is that I’ll be able to get down and dirty with WordPress, sharing hints and snippets in the process.

Posted on: November 18, 2010 · Category: Updates

OMG Ninjas in my Layout!

So, here it is, finally all coded up and polished and pretty. My shiny new layout, which is totally awesome and 99% down to Ms Bloody Awesome Lilian. Yes, I have given her new names.

I say 99% because I tweaked the titles and made them not-italic because I have secret feelings of dread when it comes to italic. Of course, I could have been a good client and told Lilian this in advance (instead of saying “yeah, just do whatever”) but I don’t like to make life easy for people.

The new whizzbang layout comes with all the parts ready for me to turn on the tumbleloggyness of Habari + my uber coding (or… well, not, because I’ve broken it at the moment) so look out for that coming soon too. :D

Please tell Lilian how cool she is, because I’ve run out of ways to say it.

ETA: the ninja is in the sidebar on the front page ;)

Posted on: June 22, 2010 · Category: Updates

On Tumblelogs and Why I Love Habari

For at least 4-5 years I’ve been desperate to turn my blog into a sort of “tumblelog”; that is, a blog that consists of multiple content types that you can easily update with more than just full on text entries. The problem is, at first I lacked the know-how to achieve it — my early blog/CMS was far too primitive and would have been virtually impossible to easily update — and then I flicked back and forth with WordPress which would have required intensive hacking about of an already bloated system.

A few years ago Tumblr came along, providing the theoretical answer to all my prayers… except 3rd party services and I don’t get along. I don’t trust other people to look after my data. (This is why I don’t post anything meaningful to twitter, incidentally.)

Fast-forward to a few months ago, and I was chatting about life streams, tumblelogs, updating websites to the girls on IRC and turns out I wasn’t the only one with this goal in mind. Furthermore, as I’ve converted a few people to Habari lately, we were all singing from the same hymn sheet (what a daft phrase) in terms of CMS, making it easier to come up with a solution that would work for us all.

As it happens, Habari has a content types plugin — created and maintained by the Habari Community, so I know it’s secure — which allows me to create custom content types on my blog to allow me to easily post photos, quotes etc with their own styling. Because of Habari’s fantastic, simple theming system it’s a piece of piss to make it do different things with different post types (no messing with complex PHP, it’s as easy as creating a .php file!) This is why I love Habari.

Posted on: April 26, 2010 · Category: Geek, PHP

Habari and Women in Web Design and Development

Ben just linked me to a noupe article about women in web design (and yes, after their previous fuck up with my details it pains me to link to them) which discusses some well known women on the web, why women are treated like shit in the industry, and some advice for young women.

It’s not a bad read, but the reason why I’m posting is not necessarily to comment on the article — I’ve discussed how I’ve been treated by others relating to IT in the past — but because it occurred to me whilst reading that the most supportive tech community I’ve been involved in since my initiation on the web is that surrounding Habari.

As such, I wanted to big up the Habari project. If you’re looking for dev stuff to get involved in, whether you’re male or female, you could do worse than taking a look at Habari. I have a series of half-finished posts and themes for Habari which had to be put on hold when I went into hospital; nonetheless, even without having contributed, I can always guarantee I can get support from the guys in the Google group or IRC channel.

Now if only they’d hurry up and bring out subpages…

Posted on: April 1, 2010 · Category: Geek, Interwebs

Feeling Rusty

For years I’ve wanted to turn my blog into a “tumble log” thing where I have different styles for different post types, and can share more of the crap I do/come across without writing a full blog entry. I started writing it, amongst other things, in my old blog. After various personal/health issues and a conversion to habari I put it on the back burner… but now I’m getting itchy fingers again.

So, cue me exploring the documentation for creating a habari content type. And now I’m sat here, gob open, begging for PHP refreshers in #habari because everything looks like code soup.

I am seriously rusty at this shit. Where’s Mat when I need him?

Posted on: March 8, 2010 · Category: Geek