Blog

Just got back, it was fun and another landmark in my long string of trips down there. The drive bakc was great. The sunset coming down the 90 was very intense, augmented by a nice Annie Lennox channel on Pandora. I broke down and gave Nancy my pristine new Moleskin which she proceeded to fill half of up with her flowers and letters and clouds. Oh well, it kept her happy. Maybe she’ll be an artist, but lately she’s been saying veterinarian and singer so we’ll see.

Busy day coming tomorrow.

WordPress is great place for writers. But what about for artists? Are your needs fulfilled by the built in tools WP provides, or do you rely on plugins to present your images the way you want them to look?

Is there a theme that works best for you, or does it lack certain features? Are you concerned about your images being copied or reused in some way without your consent?

Do you prefer to present your images on your site or on social media? What are the pros and cons of either approach?

These are some of the questions I’m hoping to answer over the next few months as I build a theme optimized for artists, and other folks for whom presenting their images online is the primary purpose for having a site.

The speakers are good, but it is hard to sit still for hours at a time. I like workshops much better.

Finally figured out a reason to like this thing.
I stopped using function keys for years, once it became necessary to hold FN to modify them so you weren’t, like, turning the volume down.
Sure, you could set it up so they would behave normally, but then you had to hold FN to, like, turn the volume down.
The new keyboard settings lets you have them switch automatically. If I’m in Adobe, editing code, or anywhere I use them heavily, they switch on by default. If I’m browsing or doing less work-productivity stuff, it switches back.
Now if I can only muscle-memory my pinking from accidentally resting on that ESC key all the time…

I want to start learning another framework. I don’t want to keep relying so heavily on WordPress as the default option when starting a new site.

It’s easy to assume that WP, being the most universal CMS, makes sense. But FSE, Gutenberg and block themes are placing enormous demands on its contributor base, theme builders and plugin developers to build a solid and user-friendly admin. Case in point: 6.2.1 auto updates broke countless sites that were using the shortcode block.

Building from scratch, something I’ve done forever, just isn’t fun anymore. There’s too much javascripting and build processes; I feel like I’m making an app (which is what modern websites are becoming, I suppose.)

While I will never touch page builders like Elementor or Divi, I’m considering GeneratePress or something closer to the core for my next WP theme. I’m also looking into WebFlow and/or Framer for my next project.

Is anyone else in this boat? How is your workflow changing, and what advice do you have?

I seriously believe Makhani sauce is the best stuff you can eat on this planet. But it is incredibly hard to make. At least, that’s been my impression to date. I spent an afternoon constructing something verbatum from some website, and it sucked so bad I tossed the entire batch.

So I’m done trying to make it. Anyone know where I can buy a TUB of the stuff??