We Now Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming….

I have a bunch of old blog posts that I’d archived and I’m sorting through, reviewing, and re-posting. I had hoped subscribers/followers wouldn’t get notified because they have publish dates that are old – but my eagle-eyed buddy Steve has informed me otherwise. So the 6 of you that regularly read this probably have an inbox full of like, 15 notifications this morning. Heh. Sorry about that. I will try to read up and see if there’s a way I can do it without sending notifications.

Because there’s like 200+ more posts coming.

I think what I may have to do is disconnect you all and then send ‘invites’ when I’m done.

Stay tuned.

Bare Bones

In an effort to focus time spent here more on content and not mucking about with design and bells and whistles, I’m conducting a bit of an experiment by going with the straight up stock default WordPress theme vs. a Studiopress theme and/or various plugins. It’s also my effort to better understand the stock features of WordPress and Jetpack – many of which I currently have no idea with regards to their usage or function, even though I’ve been developing WordPress sites for several years now.

In addition with the increase of doing actual day-job work on WordPress sites, my desire to noodle with the design and features of my own has dwindled. In fact, part of the reason I never post here is because visiting has become quite ponderous. Social media has – for all intents and purposes – supplanted the blog for the most part. I often forget though, that the Jetpack Publish feature will automatically post these to my various social media sites.

I keep telling my clients that the web has shifted from a few years ago and more emphasis is now on both content and usability – particularly mobile responsiveness/friendlyness – with regards to sites and less so on fancy designs and gimmicks. One benefit of the stock WP theme is that it’s mobile responsive right out of the box. (Not that the Studiopress themes aren’t – they are, but just saying.) Websites have essentially become online apps that people use to execute a need – be it read your post, find you company, buy your thing.

Among other things on the to-do list is to once and for all try to assemble some sort of online portfolio of my design work. Over the years I’ve used various methods including galleries on this page, galleries on photo sites such as flickr or Google+ and third party sites like Behance all to various levels of success/satisfaction. I’d really like to find one solution and stick with it.

Call it an exercise in minimalism if you will, but really what I’m trying to do is strip things down in order to get more. It just occurs to me that coincidentally, I’m trying to do the same in the real world as well.

thebuKitzone: now iPhone friendly.

Hey kids. I don’t have one, but the buKitzone is now available to all you iPhone owners in a badass iPhone friendly format, thanks to Dale, Duane and crew at BraveNewCode and the WPtouch plugin. It’s awesome.

At some point, when providers in Canada get their heads out of their asses, I will probably get an iPhone – by then Jobs and Apple will have come out with something even more cool (though I’m unsure how) like one that’s permanently mounted in your head or something.