blogging
WordPress 4 is out
And to make tinkering even more fun challenging, I learned that WordPress 4 just released along with a bunch of updates for WP plugins.
Tinkering
Not sure why but Pulpconnection has been extremely slow recently. Parts of it work fine but other parts just fail to load. Gotta tinker around to see what’s going on. Unloading and uninstalling stuff to make things simpler then we’ll see how it goes.
Expanding Outbrain’s Reach
Keep an eye out for babes on Pulpconnection. After reading this article about “Around the Web” recommendations and the mention of Outbrain.com, I got curious. I use Outbrain’s recommendations on Pulpconnection but had its scope limited to content only on my blog. For the time being, I expanded Outbrain’s recommendations to include other sites just to see if I experience what the Verge’s article mentions.
Although I think I already saw a precursor of what’s to come. Remember when I compared Outbrain, the Similar Posts plugin, and JetPack Related Posts? Outbrain had a penchant for recommending off-the-wall suggestions, typically dealing with Club 939. So just a warning that there may be babes ahead.
Where Has the Passion Gone?
New year or fatigue carried over from 2013? I’m not sure, but it surely seems the passion is gone. Things in the office feel stale. Went to a meeting where attendance was low and the energy wasn’t there. And most telling, the Home Depot employee who cheerfully helped a few years back during remodeling seemed like an entirely different person. His cheer was gone. He still knew his stuff, but he didn’t want to engage like previous interactions. And what’s with my inconsistent blogging?
Where has the passion gone?
Pulpconnection 2013 Annual Report
Catching up with older material that stockpiled during the Holidays. Follow the link to check out the WordPress-powered annual report for Pulpconnection.
Pulpconnection 2013 Annual Report
Daddy Blogging Done Right
Mommy bloggers get the attention and fame they deserve while daddy blogging isn’t so popular…unless it’s done right. Check out the Military Dad blog for an example of daddy blogging done right.
Follow along this week as Military Dad learns lessons about being a stay-at-home dad.
Themify Notes
Notes after working with Themify themes.
- Create page to contain one or more sections.
- Can apply a background image to a section (not a page).
- Have the page blank and hide the title text, include the section with background image to make full width background image (oh and be out of editing mode).
Checking Out Themify
With an on-going Cult of Mac deal for two Themify WordPress themes for the mere price of $19, I had to check it out. Normally priced at $60, this deal for two themes is hard to pass up at under 20 bucks.
And Themify has some impressive looking themes. I’ve never used their themes before and am not sure how the backend interface is. For my two themes, I might go with Magazine that so much potential though I’m sure customizing it will take some time. Parallax is really cool but doesn’t fit my needs. Responz looks fun and clean but in general, I’m not a fan of “z” words.
In either case, if these themes don’t work out, $19 is a minimal investment. Go ahead and check out the deal that’s expiring on October 20, 2013.
Deactivating JetPack Photon
Disabling the WordPress JetPack Photon function temporarily. With the latest JetPack release, Photon is messing up resized images, or rather is not adhering to image sizes. In preview mode, the images look fine, but when published, the images display in their native size.
Disabling the JetPack plugin resolved this issue, so that helped isolate the culprit. Now I’m specifically deactivating Photon to see the impact.
DreamPress, Should I?
Dreamhost just announced their new high-revving WordPress hosting service called DreamPress. Sounds like a “dream” come true if you’ve been maintaining your own WordPress install and balancing its resources and performance against cost. DreamPress seems to hit the right price point but initially, the cost is per site. I wish it were for several sites, well, at least more than one at the same price.
But I am confused about the overall pricing. I joined Dreamhost ages ago using a special promotion. Over the years, I changed to VPS, upped my server’s memory, added CloudFlare, and more. Most of the changes incurred additional costs which I think I could dump if I signed up for DreamPress. But I’m not certain if that’s “allowed” for the DreamPress pricing.
Anyways, DreamPress is an attractive option if a few more concessions are made. I gotta keep watching this…