The long-suffering reader(s) of this blog will need no reminder that [d/dn]’s been through more incarnations than the Wikipedia entry on Buddhism. But as my posts have become more sporadic in recent years, I’ve had fewer reasons to tinker with design and layout.
In fact, I last changed the theme for this site in February 2023: a mere nine months ago. I’d opted for yet another theme by Anders Norén, the beautiful and simple Koji WordPress theme, which at around five years of age is still less than a quarter as old as [d/dn].
A few weeks ago I wrote the following self-congratulatory words on LinkedIn, the social network for people with too much time on their hands at work:
I used to be the kind of person who spent days and days tinkering with the look and feel of my website rather than adding anything new in the way of content. This time around, I’ve just changed the highlight colour and added one feature image. That’s all, I promise!
I even had the gall to include a screenshot from the front page of this website (which uses the wonderful Eksell theme by Anders Noren) as it appeared at the time. Which is to say: minimalist, greyscale and about as emotionally expressive as an android in the final stages of its self-imposed obsolescence.
Seriously, where was the love?
The offending screenshot, taken on 23 September 2021. I have absolutely no idea what I was doing on that day but it can’t have been very interesting, can it?
True to form, my bravado did not last long—over the past week, instead of working on more pressing things, I’ve added a few more images to the site, just to liven things up a bit. I’ve also re-organised the landing page to give greater emphasis to my editing and freelancing work.
Slightly better, no?
That way, it feels like I’m maintaining my professional status while also giving myself permission to tool around with slightly nifty things—like the Unsplash WordPress plugin, for example (and yes, I know it’s not actually working at the moment)—in the background.
The ‘New writing’ page is no longer the front page. Just in case you were wondering. You weren’t wondering at all, were you.
As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve also added a new category of posts: flash fiction. This, in turn, has necessitated an overhaul of the category taxonomy for the whole site. Turns out ‘writing’ (as opposed to ‘fiction’ or ‘essays’) ain’t such a great name for a WordPress category, after all.
I’ll have more to say about flash fiction shortly.
Just trying to get the block editor working for me.
What I won’t be saying much about, for the moment, is my ill-advised decision to create a local server version of [d/dn] using the free version of MAMP. I suspect I will need to do a whole lot more tinkering (and perhaps take the plunge by paying for a MAMP Pro licence) before that option becomes viable.
The only positive thing to come out of that particular experiment is that I managed to overhaul and re-write the projects in my portfolio. So, my next mission will be to export those from the local server and import them to the live site—a task I’ve added to my to-tinker list, you can be sure.
“But now, about those ‘more pressing things’—”
Patience, childe.
A screenshot of the Eksell WordPress portfolio theme by Anders Norén.
It feels like I only changed the WordPress theme for this site a week ago. But I’m doing it all over again today, by installing an early version of the Eksell WordPress theme by Anders Norén.
At the time, I claimed I made that switch because of the number of spam emails I was getting from WordPress developers offering to redesign my site. In reality, those emails haven’ stopped, and I guess they never will.
Well, despite the seemingly unending flow of posts about Camp Davey it’s been pretty busy around here lately.
In the Intramanet industry we talk about the back end and the front end. While you’ve no doubt been entertained by the travails of Scaramouche, the D/DN boffins have been tinkering away behind the scenes to ensure that you experience the very best of Davey’s international web portal.
That’s why, if you visit the main page, you’ll notice that we’ve implemented a redesign—less is more, after all. Not that anybody ever gets here via the front page, anyway. It’s like a bloody speakeasy in here sometimes—people just waltzing in via the back door, and then wandering off to whichever part of the house they feel like. But, we guess that’s okay, as long as people don’t hang around too long, or leave their mess behind.
But speaking of mess, how tragic that Scaramouche has finally been evicted from Camp Davey? As disheartening as the whole episode was for us, we were also very grateful to be able to liveblog events as they happened, in real time. This was all due to the aforementioned boffins, who installed and configured a copy of Liveblog, a WordPress liveblogging plugin. The plugin itself hasn’t been updated for a while but it still managed to do the trick.
Finally, given the large number of posts on D/DN, and the continuing scourge of link rot, we continue to work behind the scenes to edit, clean up and rejuvenate various posts. However, as there are over 1200 posts to deal with, our efforts are pretty piecemeal, meaning that the quality of the posts varies quite a lot. But we’re hoping that by beginning to assign posts to various authors, and revamping the category taxonomy, we’ll be well on the way to a more streamlined site.
Thanks again for visiting Davey Dreamnation, and stay safe out there.
A screenshot of the Chaplin theme by Anders Norén.
Ever since I installed my contact form, I’ve received a barrage of emails from web designers offering to fix this website.
Every time, I say: “Yeah, you’re right. I need to fix it. But I’m what’s known in the industry as a compulsive theme changer. I’m not ready to change my website theme just now. I’ve actually gone three months without changing anything. You could say I’m in remission.”
Obviously, when I say ‘say’, I mean ‘think’ and ‘to myself’.
But yesterday I finally cracked. The latest email mercilessly dissecting my website, its lack of a responsive mobile theme in particular, sent me over the edge.
So, instead of contacting that web developer and asking them to re-do my site (which would probably be an eminently good investment of their time and my money) I switched to another free WordPress theme.
It’s called Chaplin, and was created by my favourite WordPress theme designer, Anders Norén.
Let’s see how many more fricking emails I get now.
