Posted in Behind the Scenes, Site Change Notifications

Weekly Site Changes: August 7th-August 13th, 2020

As with so many things in life, even when you’re working on a labor of love, what you wish you could make time for…you often cannot.

The end of July into August was a bit busy.  I did manage some minor updates but never got around to posting the weekly.  Mea Culpa.  The changes were on Critters and 2020 Plantings, so skipping last week’s notes wasn’t a huge loss for record keeping to me.

Annoyingly–thanks to forced changes WP has done of late–I had posted this earlier in the wee hours, only to have to unpost it because I had to learn the new workaround to avoid that should-still-be-in-alpha testing horror show known as Block Editor that just would not do something so very basic and when I tried to fix it, it reverted the post back to draft. -_-  The compromise I found is better, but still imperfect.  So I get to waste more time this upcoming week seeking better alternatives, since it looks like some of the earlier ones folks had used have since been borked and no matter the editor type, a quick glance showed me some backend things have changed as far as what’s in the body shell or not.  So I have some tracing to do to find what I want since it still exists in older posts.  *sigh*

At any rate, this week, since I had a bit more time available, here’s what I’ve been up to since then.


Recent Changes:

  • After dithering for months about how to make the side widget gallery a more appealing and less time intensive overview of my Office Window Views, and playing around with a few notions, I decided to focus that gallery on the seven most recent OWVs.  It’s now labeled “Latest Views”.  I hope folks find the change worthwhile.  Feel free to let me know either way in the comments below.
    • I likely will make a separate top menu linked gallery Page for OWV’s overall, but I doubt that will happen until mid-fall.
    • Of course this forced me to berate myself for how far behind I’d gotten not just in all the related OWV catchups and fixes, but also all of this year’s OWVs that have been patiently waiting on my hard drive to get their day as an actual post.  So the “latest” views available are from back in May–but at least of this year!
  • Updated 2020 Plantings Page as things develop.
  • Updated Critters Page when time allowed me to input more info.  My vocabulary is slightly improving as far as category breakdowns, so some changes should reflect that.
  • Updated the “What I’m planting” side widget as needed.
  • I did finally check be certain what happened to the side widgets in tablet and phone layouts (drops to the bottom of those formats’ pages}, and although it’s not optimal, it is pretty much the accepted standard so I won’t change anything.

Still to Do and Rollover (with notes and changes):

  • Do the darn Planting Page icon drawings already!
  • Office Window Views (OWV)
    • Keep adding:
      • at least one 2019 unposted OWV–you left off on June 22, 2019.
      • and one 2020 unposted OWV and update the slideshow –you left off on May 23, 2020.
    • Go through media files, make sure all OWV labels and names are consistent.
    • Make sure earliest views are tagged as such, before we came up with the “tag”.
  • Continue to double check all posts’ Cats and Tags. (When you finally get around to this, note where you leave off for sanity’s sake.)
    • Continue Tag cleanup (typos, dumb ideas, excessive growing in gardner).
    • GiG tag removal progress: still only the first few I did immediately
    • Create either a widget or something under the Our Plants page that has all the new Tags listed for posts that used to be under sub cats of Plants or newly make Project Progress.
  • Do the changeover for “Friends?” Page and explain why that’s changing.
  • Decide what to do for a rotating header.
  • Finalize format for 2Hr Garden series for consistency.
    • Finish current draft for first 2HG series this year.
  • Add at least one new plant a month to “our plants”.
  • Add at least one new critter a month to “Critters”.
  • What is “food animals” and “food insects” supposed to represent on the data page?  I’m so confused because it doesn’t seem to be what my brain wants it to be.
  • Consider a Cloud tag/placement.
  • Keep working on the garden plot plan.
  • Keep weeding through all draft posts, polish when possible, update when needed, ditch when not worth spending further time.
  • Start story boarding the garden comic, with the intent to have a buffer for when it does finally make the light of day.
  • Decide on a schedule for second story window view images.

[REMINDER TO FUTURE ME: If you shut off the scheduled post option to add something before you go to bed, don’t forget to turn it back on after you’re done so it actually posts when it’s supposed to, you silly!]

  • Gardner, MA, USA

Care to share thoughts on this?