Not my best week as to posting daily on time. Rookie mistakes were made, but I’m not deterred from still trying to meet a daily post schedule despite feeling foolish.
I had started a few posts for this week, then lost focus/time to other everyday mostly not garden related things. Half the week went by before I realized I had not finished nor scheduled what I should have. I hope to have the rest I didn’t have time to finish up by the end of this weekend.
As I feared, I’m already having trouble juggling ramping up garden related activities while keeping the daily blog posting on time.
Without further ado, let’s get to this week’s updates and progress notes.
Recent Changes:
- Minor additions on the Data Page.
- Polished and added the March 30, 2021 Office Window View.
- Updated the Present Plant Plans widget.
- Added a new Page, 2021 Compost, to start keeping track of what we put in the compost each year, similar to the yearly Plantings Pages. I did consider making this a sub page of the Data Page, but decided it might be better as its own Parent as a companion to the yearly Planting Pages.
- Decided against a rotating header image for now, and instead will change it out when the mood strikes me, but images will likely be season related to current time.
- Changed Our Plants Page title to Plants. The possessive just felt off…we’re not creating new variants that would make them uniquely ours–so I dropped it.
- Realized I had left a post way back in January in drafts because I couldn’t figure out why the Format wasn’t working correctly. It turned out it was as simple as Image only works if the image is the very first thing in the post. Any text has to follow after. It’s formatting properly in the feed now.
2021 To Do:
- Finish the other posts that were supposed to go up during the (now last) week and publish backdated to when they were planned for release. (Don’t forget to take that one picture for WW.)
- Take an image of the compost areas or maybe just the general bin since there’s still so many plants that would obscure the view, add to the 2021 Compost Page.
- Finalize format for 2Hr Garden series for consistency.
- Finish current draft for first 2HG series this year.
- Might want to add a 2020 Compost Page, since we’re still a one bin system.
- Still seeking the the not online note of when we took our rain barrel in last fall. It will go out this month, but I’m watching the temps as I hope to find my note.
- RE: the landscape fabric rant post–don’t forget to take a picture in that same spot as the last time for a near future post follow up on the topic.
- Pick a deadline for what to do about the Friends? page.
- Pick a time duration for that notion of recording the environmental audio in the yard and nothing else posts.
- Figure out why the cookie consent widget isn’t WAI.
- For now, try to get one pre-migration post fixed per week, starting with the post after the very first post. Delete the old site mirror when finished.
- Decide if I put a notice up on the old site that I’m not going to update it anymore and where to find me now. Not sure if necessary since it seems all my subscribers from the old site smoothly migrated (at least something migrated as intended!). Wondering about this because of one new subscriber that did so on the old site, but not here.
- Until the old site is completely bereft of posts, how often should I migrate subscribers if I continue to get more there? Once a month will probably work unless somehow a flood of new subs start building up as the growing season warms up.
- Continue to research and test accessibility related items for the site as time allows.
Migration Hiccups Needing Fixing:
- Continue checking categories on all pre-migration move posts. The remaining to fix were formerly in Conservation, Monarch Guardianship (sub of Conservation) & Plants, Seeds (sub of Plants). Note where you left off.
- Continue fixing in-site links that still point to growingingardner.wordpress.com. Note where you left off.
- I also need to do a last
gallery comparison check to make sure all the images made it here in one piece and[done], check if all images are linked properly in the posts to which they belong. [still to do], note here last post checked: start at the 2nd post in 2018.
Accessibility Related to Do:
- Started adding image alt text/description as from February 10, 2021–Office Window View post and on to present.
- Currently have done none from the first post onwards. [Change this once started to help keep track.]
- Try out a different accessibility widget in April and see if it breaks like the current one does.
- Keep reading up on the latest accessibility changes on WP to get a better understanding of how alternate options are presented on the blog, and related—accept the fact that either Future Me is going to have to track down the Theme creator if that’s the issue since it hasn’t been updated in so long OR accept the face that Future Me is going to have to redo the Theme so all the Accessibility functions work properly.
- Don’t forget about how best to handle near-future-but-not-just-yet podcast posts for hearing impaired visitors.
- Don’t forget letter about adding closed captions for visually impaired visitors to those way-later-in-the-future videos.
Pre-migration Still to Do and Rollover (with notes and changes):
[Pretty much all of these items are dead last priority right now, only move to the top any that are time sensitive and reasonably doable in available time.]
- Keep working on the garden plot plan.
- Oh, Planting Page icon drawings, you’re still not done…*headdesk*
- 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”.
- Keep adding:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Consider a Cloud tag/placement.
[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!
RELATED REMINDER: Make sure the date you schedule for is the right day. Even if you fix it later, it still hangs around on the WP Reader.]
