This website is very old. It’s been with me for many years. There are plenty of articles which are useful both for myself and the rest of the world. Bit by bit, word by word, link by link, image by image, this site was filled and filled over the years. Technologies changed. Some new techniques and concepts came up. Some old ones faded away. Spending as much time as I possible can (after everything else) on this site, sometimes I manage to introduce big changes – like a new bit of functionality or a totally different look. Not to confuse and scare everyone, I try to be open about the changes that were made. When something big is changed I post a description of what it was and why I felt the change was needed. These updates are published in this category.
Today I finally did something that I have been planning for a really long time – applied a new look for Movie Reviews categories. Instead of them showing movie reviews like regular posts, they now show movie poster thumbnail and a star rating that I gave to the movie. Clicking on the thumbnail brings you to the full review page, just like before.
I spent a bit more time yesterday tweaking the site. I love the Carrington theme, but a few things annoyed me. So I changed them. Here is a list:
Last night the server ran out of disk space while doing a backup. That affected most of the sites and some services hosted on this server. I have cleaned up some space since, and made sure that there will be enough of it for the backups to run. I’ll also keep an eye on it to see if there was some other problem hiding behind the disk space issue.
Apologies to everyone who was affected.
I just wanted to let you all know about the latest changes to this site.
Firstly, I removed the Latest Twits widget from the sidebar. Somehow I am not using Twitter all that much lately. I still love the service, but I have two problems with it. Actually, it’s one, but I feel it in two separate ways. Firstly, I still don’t have a good Twitter client application. Not on my mobile, and not on my desktop. I tried a billion of them, and I am yet to find one that suits me. Without a proper client, I tend to forget to tweet, read other tweets, and respond. Too bad. Second problem is that I am annoyed by all the links that are posted in tweets these days. Sometimes I just want to get the statuses only, to see how my friends are doing and what they are up to. Instead I get a billion links, which I need to click, check, and follow. As I said, I wish I could filter them out in my Twitter client, for those times when I have more time and better Internet connection. The blog will still send the “new blog post” tweets to Twitter though, and I am still trying my best to use the service. It’s just that judging by all the updates I do, the sidebar space can be used better.
Secondly, I added Google Reader shared items to the sidebar. Google Reader is the application I use a lot! And I share quite a bit of stuff. Too bad it often goes unnoticed. Sharing those links and articles via sidebar might give an extra bit of attention to those things that I think deserve it. Just in case you are wondering which plugin I used – it’s Google Reader Widget by James Wilson.
Thirdly, I added some social network buttons in the upper-right corner of the website. These are links to some of my other online profiles and also and easy way to bookmark, share, and promote either the whole website or a specific page that you liked. The plugin that I used for this functionality is Fixed Social Buttons by Ioane.
It’s been a while since I changed the theme of the site. Today I felt like I needed it again. I looked around, checked a few options, and decided to go with the Carrington theme from the excellent folks at Crowd Favorite. It looks simple, yet elegant, fresh and modern. And it is not just your average WordPress theme. It is a whole framework. I didn’t have much to play with it yet, but even from the first few looks it’s very interesting. The theme files and logic are organized in such a way that makes modifying it and building on top of it extremely easy. And unlike some other frameworks, it doesn’t force you to start designing your theme from scratch. It provides already a default look with a few administration options that are handy for people like me, who are just starting up with it.
The second big change that was done today – IntenseDebate plugin was disabled. IntenseDebate is a nice system, and I totally dig the concept, and all, but it turned out to be slightly annoying for me personally. Somehow, the moderation never worked the way I wanted it to work. Comments and the comment form didn’t look the way I wanted them to look (and I couldn’t bother with styling them myself). And it was slowing the site quite a bit by loading all those images, styles, and the JavaScript. Gladly though, IntenseDebate works well with WordPress and I didn’t have to do anything to get my comments back – they are all here exactly how you’d expect them.
As always, after major changes like these, there will be a brief period of tweaking and tuning. If you notice any issues with the site, please let me know. Also, I’d appreciate your opinions and feedback regarding these changes. Thank you for the patience during the bumpy ride. Hopefully you can still enjoy this place.