Back and forth


Another advantage of the recent WordPress upgrade means I can now do things like this. The photo is a Prague street scene that I found in a newspaper years ago which I decided to depopulate in Photoshop. In the past you could only do this with a special plugin but WordPress changed the user interface a while back from a basic write-text-and-add-media arrangement to a more complex editing system known as Gutenberg. The new editor uses CSS-style blocks which you fill with different types of “content” then shuffle around until you have a layout that you’re happy with. You can do a lot with these blocks but most of the tools that control them are hidden from view behind multiple menus and sub-menus; using the system means you first have to learn and memorise the location and function of all these hidden tools. Users of standalone installations of WordPress are a loyal bunch but there was a very negative reaction to the new editor, so much so that a plugin appeared almost immediately which reverts the interface to the former system. WordPress continues to evolve Gutenberg, however, and now provides a variety of media blocks like this picture-comparison thing. The utility is limited but it looks nice.

I’m in the anti-Gutenberg camp for the most part, especially when looking at the code that makes something like this possible. Most of the posts here are written outside WP as plain text with handwritten HTML tags; Gutenberg adds loads of new tags and instructions that clutter up the back end. I may work as a book designer but a print-style layout isn’t what I want to emulate for these pages. (And the Adobe applications I use don’t hide all their controls unless you really want them to.) Gutenberg is no doubt useful for people with big media websites using WordPress as a CMS to create layouts filled with articles, video and the like. But I’ll be sticking with the old system for now.

T-shirts again

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One of the many benefits of upgrading WordPress is that I’ve finally got a proper PayPal-oriented sales interface working on the T-shirts page. So when people click “Buy now” they get a pop-up range of options to select, plus a running total of the shirt cost, all in one place. I might have said “just in time for summer” but after last month’s heatwave the forecast here is for 16C tomorrow. Welcome to the North.

Also, I’m not bothering cross-posting this one to Twitter because bollocks to that place. Twitter killed WordPress auto-posting a while back, and since I’ve reinstalled WP it now doesn’t show image previews when I manually post them. There may be a solution to the latter issue but I really can’t be bothered finding it.

Update: Added a Summerisle shirt based on this design. Also new options for long sleeves and tie-dyes.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Getting shirty again
Getting shirty
More shirts
T-shirts by Skull Print

Maintenance 2

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“Ralph in his space flyer overhauls the Martian, Llysanorh. He will trap him with his Ultra-Generator.” A scene from Ralph 124C 41 + written by Hugo Gernsback.

Another public service announcement to say that the aforementioned server replacement has now taken place. In fact I’ve moved my site to a new webhost after service at the previous place had become increasingly poor. Most of today has been occupied with upgrading WordPress and installing the database on the new server. This is always a tricky business if you’re not used to the eccentricities of WordPress or moving databases around. I can do all this but, like Bartleby the Scrivener, I prefer not to. The effort was worth it, however, the software is now more future-proof than it was, and the site is finally https which may please some people. I still have to check web pages for missing images and the like so if you see anything that looks awry please leave a comment. Regular service will resume tomorrow.

Maintenance

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Don’t try this at home.

A rare Sunday post to inform regular readers that plans are in motion to move this site to a new server. The software that runs the site requires upgrading in several areas so relocation is the best solution for an essential process. There may be a short period when { feuilleton } seems to be unavailable but this shouldn’t last long. Fingers crossed.

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It’s been a while since I’ve had to wheel out the train picture… The reason this time was the site being down for 24 hours as a result of severe incompetence by my webhost. I won’t bore you with the details, it’s aggravating enough having to think about never mind write it all down, but for now the situation seems more stable than it was. I’ve wasted so much time over the past two months in communication with various support people that I’d move the hosting elsewhere if I had the time. Luckily for the current shower I’m too busy with creative work to deal with such a major logistical effort. I’m not anticipating any further outages but if they do occur again they shouldn’t be for very long.

Okay, enough of this. The post intended for yesterday is waiting in the wings. Onward!