I’ve been feeling restless about my blog for a good long while. Wanting to update, not quite wanting to commit the words I want to say to the vastness that is the internet. However, a resurgence in indie websites and personal blogging has given me a bit of motivation, so I’m hoping this is the kick up the butt I need to get moving again.
To “celebrate” this I’ve gone old school with my theme – partly inspired by one of mine from 2006 (yes, I’m that old) and partly inspired by McLuhan by Anders Norén. I’ve thrown this together in a couple of hours, so testing has been limited especially on mobile devices – but I’ll worry about that later. I also plan on adding a dark mode, because of course.
The key thing about this update is going back to basics and stripping out a lot of the superfluous imagery. Adding images to my blog was always an attempt to please the crowd and not because I actually gave a shit, and I think that’s part and parcel of why I started to withdraw. This was about my words in 2002, and should be about my words now.
I’m going to try and blog once a week until the habit kicks in again, but how many times have I said that before? We’ll see…
Wow, that title is a bit of a mouthful. OK, so let me decipher: you can customise WordPress excerpts to add a “read more” link to post excerpts, e.g. as per this (cleaned up) example from the codex: function new_excerpt_more( $more ) { global $post; return ‘<a class=”moretag” href=”‘. get_permalink( $post->ID ) . ‘”>Read the… read full entry »
I’m sat at my laptop — nothing new there — with a work todo list as long as my arm because I did very little in the last week (feeling poop) and all I want to do is code. “But Jem, you’re a web developer, work is code?!” I hear you cry. I don’t want… read full entry »
I officially released the premium version of my PHP mail form last night. Partly because it’s been on the cards for a while, and partly because I wanted to get started on my plan to be mortgage free in five years. I can’t hang about if I need to be paying in £1,633.09 per month…. read full entry »
A client recently asked me to make the post excerpts in their blog page clickable. This seems like a reasonable request and the logical answer (if you know your WordPress basics) is to open the relevant template file (probably index.php or home.php in this case) and wrap the_excerpt(); in <a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>”.. (and so… read full entry »
I’ve been getting about a bit lately — no sarcastic comments please — so thought I’d share the results of my hard work. More WordPress stuff: Developing bespoke WordPress plugins for a work client — this one was a bit odd to write as I’m not used to such a strict editorial process. Apparently you’re… read full entry »
Tutorialtastic is closing today. Closing, gone. After 8 years of hardy service to you, the blogger, the developer, the web hobbyist. Don’t cry, my sweets, for where one door closes another duly opens… It has taken nearly THREE years to get to this point (albeit delayed due to pregnancy, sickness, babies, life, work, etc). Three… read full entry »
I’m being nagged for a NinjaLinks update ;) If you currently use the script and have feature in mind, please add your requests here. Can’t guarantee a date for release (for obvious reasons) but will fit it in when I can.
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… read full entry »
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… read full entry »