Ekto gammit

Recent changes here at samdevol.com

I have been meaning to post a note about some of the recent changes here, but have been busier then a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs (been dying to use that phrase for some time ;’)…

I’ve adopted a new theme called nobus, designed by Dezzain Studio. The UI is not too simple, not too complex, not too dark. The header is a bit tall, but I want to live with it a bit before attempting changes (the height did allow me to pretty much cut-and-paste some of my code/hacks into the header to retain functionality I desired (translation service, RSS icon w/out scrolling down, my logo and some quotes). There is a big difference in typography, not just style, but size and spacing. Feedback is desired/welcome about these (and any other) changes.

Some minor changes in functionality, testing new plugins (not just new to me, but new to WP 2.3 and/or the ‘world’), carefully applying some AJAX (less then 2% of my visitors have JavaScript turned off, but I do keep an eye on this and try to use JS that will degrade/fall-back to HTML behavior/appearance.

Posted here about using Zazz Post ticker. I have been keeping an eye out for something with this functionality over the last year or so, and everything I researched/tried was either too clunky/ugly or required more time to integrate then I was willing to devote. This one dropped right in without a struggle and styled up quite easily with a few CSS additions.

Some other new plugin additions:

  • DoFollow Using no-follow as a rule just doesn’t make sense any more, it should be the exception.
  • Enforce www. Preference I dropped the www NOTE: This plugin is now redundant with 2.3.
  • HeadSpace2 Experimenting with this meta-generator-on-steroids
  • Link Indication If we are going to put the control/decision about how links/new-windows are handled into the users hands, let them make an informed decision?
  • Nofollow reciprocity If I’m going to turn off no-follow, I expect you to, as well
  • Shutter Reloaded With all the different javascript libraries and resultant conflicts my lightbox/slimbox scripts started acting whacky. Just dropped this in and I’m ok for now ;’)
  • WP-Footnotes Because some of my posts just need footnotes.
  • Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form Fianlly broke down and decided to try/test a plugin form solution

Some folks email me now and then about the quotes in my header, so just as an FYI: I use Quality Quotes, and the thing I love the most about this ‘yet-another-random-quote’ plugin is that it goes out and gets 10 quotes each day and then cycles randomly through them on each page refresh. So instead of hitting/depending-on some outside resource every time a page is refreshed on my site it’s cached locally. Fast, lightweight and independent.

Closing with one of my favorite recent quotes:

We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
– Wernher von Braun

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Posted in Computers, Theme, Things, widgets, WordPress
2 comments on “Recent changes here at samdevol.com
  1. Jon says:

    with the 2.3 version of WordPress, isn’t the enforce www preference unnecessary?

  2. Sam says:

    With the release version, I hope it is redundant, yes. In beta I didn’t want to try dumping it, I just had too much going on. Will probably test tomorrow and note above as needed.

    Note: Your link gives me a 404 error…

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