Life is complicated. For example, I want to keep myself accountable for doing certain things I have set out to do. The problem being that those things don’t necessarily have to be done. They’re things that, when not done, wouldn’t inconvenience anyone. Like working on my countless projects or releasing apps that I don’t share with anyone.
But one part of my brain always feels the urge to track what I did, to create some kind of track record. To remind myself that sometimes I do actually manage to briefly kick the butt of undiagnosed ADHD and do something. That’s why I’m going to track my “updates” here much like I track the release notes of apps like CATS that aren’t read by anyone (I am convinced people don’t even realize new releases happen pretty frequently)
Updating blog and website
Today I set out to make some changes to both this blog and my website. Things didn’t quite go as smoothly as I would have liked. The reason being that the templating system for WordPress is ass. I now fully understand why some people just completely ignore these aspects of WordPress in favor of using templates like Astra in combination with Elementor. Something to consider for future updates to my main website, for sure.
It was time to make some changes to both my blog and website to reflect the current state of my social media presence ever since I rarely or never post on Twitter, and also reflect the fact that this blog now exists. Here’s what happened this afternoon:
- Moved posts from torettox84.com to this blog
- Changed the link on the website so it points to this blog instead of its own blog section.
- Change the butt-ugly-menu (half-complete, I didn’t handle the submenu)
- Remove the reference to Twitter in my “Socials”
- Replaced the “Socials” link with a link to my Linktree; as much as I don’t like their model and features it’s easier to have one place to update links than point to my website.
- Removed the Newsletter link on this blog which was a relic from when this was still the Joomla & More blog.
- Change the “Videos” link which pointed to the PowerUserGuide YouTube channel to link to my the Torettox84 YouTube channel.
- Nuked the old categories on this blog, which were relics of when this blog was still Joomla & More
- Updated my LinkTree to remove some of the socials that I never use or plan on using in the future such as Mastodon, Spoutible and Twitter
New template
I’ve also changed the template for this blog. Saying that was a pleasant experience would be lying. The templates and template system for WordPress have become completely ass over the years. “Full site editing” sounds great in theory but everything about it gives me head aches. I fully understand why people are using “super themes” like Astra that let you configure your full site (with way better tools) and use tools like Elementor to style the website instead of relying on the tools that WordPress are offering them.
At some level I knew those tools sucked – the torettox84.com uses an Astra template after all – but I guess I just forgot because I’ve been avoiding doing anything that comes close to changing website styles for a very long time (writing the “styles” of CATS not included, obviously) because it’s not an area of work where my strengths lie. And if they would lie there, it would be because they died, fell over and were moved to them away from the things I’m good at so as not to affront my other living skills.
That being said, I do still have my accounts on those sites. I have a habit of hoarding accounts on platforms that I don’t ever end up using. I know I don’t have an online “profile” that warrants the type of paranoia I have in these types of events but I feel like having an “official” account on all socials even if I’m not using them is a pretty good way to battle imposters who are then forced to become torettox84531 or something like that.
With that being said and done, here’s to more “Release Notes” in the future!
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