Hi everyone! First off, before the changelog, a big thank you to everyone who has visited my site since its launch. I know I’m catering to a small audience for now, but it still means a lot that anybody is giving it a peek. Thank you.

As a treat, here’s an old WIP video of the site.

An old WIP video of the site; the post cards were originally meant to stack. It ended up being too much of a mess, so that functionality was removed.

While I’m proud of the launch and how far the site has come in such a short time, I fully acknowledge that my blog was barebones in terms of features — and it was slow. Painfully slow. This update resolves those problems. Take a peek at the changelog below.

Changelog

  • Added a Contact page.
  • Added an email newsletter subscription widget to the sidebar. Just one more way to keep up to date with this blog… once there is some more content. Soon.
  • Added an icon to indicate off-site links (you can see one below! …or right here).
  • Added a header to tag archive pages.
  • Added a parallax effect to the hero image. I hope to tinker more with this in the future.
  • Fixed a number of performance issues tied to images; they are served in “next-gen” formats, lazy loaded, and appropriately sized. Readers with modern browsers should have a better experience.
  • Speaking of modern browsers, I added a warning banner for IE users. Seriously, if you’re still using it… stop. I pray the banner will never be seen. Don’t disappoint me. I will know.
  • How will I know? I added Google Analytics to track that, along with some other events.
  • Added pagination to the bottom of the post list. (Yes, I launched without it; I figured it was not immediately needed. I was correct.)
  • Adjusted the placement of list item icons.
  • Shrunk the margin under form elements.
  • Adjusted the header nav links to be easier to click.
  • Hid the post “updated” date if it is the same as the post “published” date.
  • Added color to the browser toolbar area on mobile.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the “number of comments” tag to run off of a post card on mobile.
  • Added some other behind-the-scenes best-practice items. In short, you won’t notice much of a difference.

Of course, special thanks to my wife (Court) and my sister (Holly), for helping me test some stuff.

Final Thoughts

Some of these features come from just tinkering in WordPress; the rest of the items are new features that are baked into the theme. I’m hoping to continue working on it to a point that I can release it open-source, but it is not quite there yet. And of course, I have more actual content coming up soon – blog posts, game reviews, the works. Bear with me, please.

That wraps up this changelog. What do you think? If you have any questions or suggestions (or even if you find a problem), let me know in the comments below. Or on the new Contact page.

Featured image by Anas Alshanti on Unsplash.