It’s been some time since I last properly posted, which, even then, was in acknowledgement that I don’t post a lot. There are good reasons. The main reason was that I wanted to get away from WordPress as, frankly, I hate it, from a developer’s perspective. If you hate a codebase, you’re unlikely wanting to spend time customising it – especially if you’re not getting paid for it. I also had my own css templates ready to completely overhaul the look of the site (and didn’t want to create a theme in WordPress), and had that planned to be built in to whatever next CMS I wanted to use next. It’s not been easy to find a CMS that will suit me. As I work with it daily, for my job, I’d like a Laravel based CMS, with PyroCMS being the front runner. However, development on that seems to be halted, or at least very slow, which doesn’t give you confidence of there being a codebase that won’t outdate very quickly. So I’m still on the lookout for a replacement.
With the above in mind, I was on a data freeze until I had gotten that part of the project done. I really am not looking forward to the data migration to a new CMS, and the fewer posts to move the better. Obviously, it hasn’t materialised as yet, and I have articles I had prepped just sitting in draft, being forgotten about and also outdating. So I should at last try and keep this site ticking over, whilst we wait – as it could be a long wait.
I also wanted to do a server and domain migration. It was getting annoying having to manually update the SSL cert, every 3 months, due to .dev domains not having port 80 access (yes, I know there are plugins that can do this but it’s quicker to do the 3 month manual thing than sort it out). Now I’ve moved to a .net domain, the SSL cert can be automatically renewed. I have also moved to a different server, which will help with running costs.
And life also got in the way. I was recently diagnosed with FND – which is something I have been dealing with for many years, and took a hell of a complaining to even get to see a specialist. It plays havoc with my memory, and ability to think clearly, amongst a host of other things – just great for my line of work. The whole condition can be very frustrating on a daily basis.
So there we are; big plans that kinda went wrong. C’est la vie.