New Appearance
Posted: Sun 23 September, 2012 Filed under: D4D™, Redesign, WordPress Leave a comment »If you look at D4D™ on the site, rather than through an RSS reader, you’ll have already noticed I’ve put a new theme on the site for the time being.
There’s no real reason for it, I just fancied a bit of a change. There’s been a lot of change this year for me, which has also come through onto D4D (for obvious reasons) so it felt like I should change things here visually too. Besides, it’s been the existing theme for a very long time now, so time for a bit of an update.
It may also be the indicator of a new mode for D4D™, I don’t know yet. We’ll see.
Belated Birthday
Posted: Thu 27 August, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Redesign 1 Comment »Buggeration. I’ve just realised that I missed D4D™’s 7th birthday, back on the 9th August.
I’m normally pretty good at pointing out birthdays on here, so I’m quite surprised (and somewhat annoyed) that I failed to mention this one.
It’s also made me realise that all the stuff I had done for custom headers etc. on certain days has gone by the by since the redesign as well. So that’s something I need to work on a bit when I get the chance. (And I wonder if I’ve still got the list of dates somewhere. Hope so!)
But anyway, wow – D4D™’s been going seven years now. That’s pretty good going.
And Happy Belated Birthday, little D4D™. Long may you continue.
Analytics
Posted: Wed 18 February, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Redesign Leave a comment »Damn, knew I’d forgotten something with all the redesign stuff that’s been going on here. And I’ve just discovered what that something was.
Google Analytics.
So for the last four days, according to Analytics no-one had visited D4D™ at all. Ooops.
It’s all fixed now – but all the same, a pain in the backside.
Yeah, different again
Posted: Mon 16 February, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Redesign, Thoughts 3 Comments »OK, so I’ve made a decision following on from a couple of posts over the weekend re style/colouration etc.
And yes, before anyone chimes in with it, this is one of the benefits with using WordPress – shedloads of templates that are available and lovely.
With some hindsight, there were some things I wasn’t happy about with the FluidYellowBlack (FYB) template, although it fitted fine under “that’ll do”. And having re-looked on the dev version of D4D, and trying out a different template instead of FYB, I found myself liking it more and more.
So three days after relaunch/redesign 1, welcome to the new redesign 2. Not so much a redesign as a different template, in fairness – but I’m pretty sure I prefer this one, all things considered.
No, it still doesn’t have much of a connection to the full D4D name – but this one feels more like me, for some reason I haven’t yet ascertained.
Enjoy.
Colour Scheme
Posted: Mon 16 February, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Redesign, Thoughts 5 Comments »Following on from a conversation via Twitter on Friday, I’m wondering about the colour-scheme and design here. I know, go through a redesign and migration (and organisation) and suddenly I want to do another one. Live with it.
The fact is, it took me ages to find a template with a significant dollop of yellow in it – obviously yellow isn’t all that popular when it comes to designs.
Those with long memories will know that D4D™ was initially called “Destruction For Dummies” rather than “Dummies for Destruction”, and the initial design (if I can call it that) was based on the “For Dummies” range of books. Then I got that ‘cease and desist’ email from Wileys telling me that “[Anything] For Dummies” was part of their trademark. So the name changed (but stayed as D4D) and here I’ve been since. And the yellow’s stayed too.
Of course, with the new template I don’t need to have the rubbish with the colour switcher. But I do wonder whether I should screw about even more, and possibly change the appearance of D4D™ beyond all recognition from the old version.
I don’t know yet. We’ll see.
And of course if you’ve got any views, let me know in the comments, yeah?
Missing Pages
Posted: Sun 15 February, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Redesign Leave a comment »As part of D4D moving hosts, I haven’t yet copied over the non-blog pages. In truth, I don’t kow that I will do. A lot of the D4D site consists/ed of pages that were no longer maintained or used any more, and were just taking up space.
I don’t know whether any of the pages were massively in use (Yes, I should’ve done a proper check before just removing them, but well, I didn’t) but I’ll keep an eye on the site error logs and see whether it’s worth copying any of it over.
Time will tell, I know – but for now there’s just going to be the main blog part here, and then from there we’ll see how it goes.
Blogroll
Posted: Sun 15 February, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Redesign 4 Comments »As part of the redesign here, I’ve also had a quick run-through of the blog-roll over there on the right, and culled a few I no longer read, or who no longer update.
It’s interesting seeing how things change – and adding new bits and bobs to the sidebars that now exist – and keeping everything a bit more up to date.
I’m sure I’ll add in a few more over time – there’s a couple of new additions in there already – but for now it’s enough to just be up to date.
Redesign/ Relaunch
Posted: Sat 14 February, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Redesign 9 Comments »As any observant person will have spotted, the design here at D4D™ has finally been updated.
At the same time, as per posts earlier this week, I’ve also upgraded to WordPress 2.7.1, migrated the database up to the proper level(which was a pig to do right) and moved hosts.
I’m now using a US-based hosting company, so the pages may take slightly longer to load (time will tell on that score) but it means I no longer have to worry about bandwidth, storage etc.
The changes appear to have been pretty smooth so far – the random titles are in place, the big black paragraph at the top of the page will change for certain days, (today being the first) and I feel that the colour-scheme is now decent enough that I don’t need to worry about the colour-scheme widget I wrote way back in the day.
I’ve still got to amend some other bits (the word count function, for example) and fix/resurrect a lot of the links on the blogroll, but yeah, the basics are there and I’m really quite pleased with the results.
To Upgrade, or Not
Posted: Wed 11 February, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Geeky, Redesign, Thoughts 4 Comments »One of the current questions I keep coming back to with D4D™ is whether I should bother upgrading my WordPress install to get me back up to date.
As it is, D4D™ still runs on WP 2.1 , and the current version is 2.7 . It’s so behind the times that I know I should go through the pain of a multi-version upgrade, but I honestly don’t know if I can actually be bothered.
I’m very aware that when I moved over to WP, it was a pain – although I wouldn’t go back now, believe me – and I know that the D4D™ template has been corrupted by me to within an inch of its life.
Of course, I could do the upgrade, and put D4D™ into a WP template for a while. That’d be quite a shock to the system, wouldn’t it? If I were to go that route, I’d also be putting into place at least the basics of a re-plan of how things go on D4D™ including taking out a lot of the old sections that really aren’t looked at any more, and just a bit of a tidy up.
Oh, and a move to a new/different host. After all, why make things simple and do just one thing at a time? That’s no bloody fun at all…
Redirecting
Posted: Mon 19 January, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Redesign, Thoughts, Web Development Leave a comment »Over the weekend, following on from a comment on here from Chris, I finally got round to making a change to the index page of D4D™ that I really should have made months (if not years) ago. And in honesty, I really thought I had done it years ago. I certainly planned to.
Anyway, the index page now redirects back to here. Which is how it should be, and what it should’ve been doing ages ago.
There are still plans for a redesign of D4D™, which would also involve moving servers to a new home. (That’s also related to another plan for some rationalisation of the number of hosting services I currently use) At that point, this section of D4D™ may change to being the index page of the entire site – so you’d only need www.dummies-for-destruction.co.uk , instead of remembering that extra /random – but setting things up in this way now will theoretically make things easier on that score anyway.
Come that time, I’ll be redirecting back the other way, so that anything at /random goes back to the index page. And all will be well.
We’ll see though. It’s a way off yet because like the builder who never completes his own extension, I’ve got enough work on right now that redeveloping/redesigning D4D™ keeps on getting put back.
Maybe I should set a target date, and then just work on thrashing it through. Or maybe I’ll simply let D4D™ keep on shambling along in its current guise for a while yet.
Time will tell.
Redesign : Stage One Complete
Posted: Tue 19 August, 2008 Filed under: D4D™, Redesign Leave a comment »A week ago, I said that I’d set up a development site for the redesign and redevelopment of D4D.
Today, one week later I’ve got the first stage of that completed – the migration of the current database over to the development site, and then upgrade it from WP2.1 to WP2.6. It might not sound like much, but it’s certainly a major stage in the process, so yes, all is good.
Now it’s “just” everything else. Deciding what to keep, what to remove, and what to do with it all.
Should be fun. *cough*
Starting a Redesign
Posted: Tue 12 August, 2008 Filed under: D4D™, Redesign Leave a comment »In honour of having just gone past it’s sixth birthday, I’m going to be looking at redesigning D4D™
And today I’ve made the first steps – a trial area to work on it.
It’s not just a redesign though, I’m also going to look at dropping some of the sections on D4D™ that don’t get many visits, or that I just plain don’t update. It might also reduce the amount of webspace I’m using, although that’s not a big factor in the entire thing.
But we’ll see how it goes. I’m not going to guarantee anything just yet- hell, I’m not even certain that the entire database will migrate correctly, as it’s still on a very old version of WordPress- but at least I’m making those first steps.