As spring is upon us and so many folks move toward those spring cleaning chores in conjunction with new beginnings with gardens plowed and planted and often time a good deal of livestock is born, I was also moved here on the blog. I have done a refresh a lot of things including a new theme, getting rid of a lot of clutter, and just in general have freshened things up a good bit. I plan to continue with at least an attempt and more regular interval of blog posting.
I have reverted back to the BlackWood theme for the blog for a couple of reasons. First of all, I think it makes the blog easier to read then the previous theme was. Additionally I think it is a cleaner look, but still retains the over all rustic down at the barn (or at least out on the porch) feeling that I want the blog to give off in general. I had used this theme way back when in the very original days, but had moved away from it due to some limits. After making some modifications to it, I find myself very pleased with it. I really like the combination of the latest posts and categories into one area that is swappable via a tab and just as navigable as it ever was. The previous theme would sometimes lose track of a font color in widget for whatever reason. I have yet to see that occur with the BlackWood theme, which is an extra bonus.
In addition to the theme, the biggest other change is in the archive presentation structure. Formerly I was using a plugin called Snazzy-Archives. That plugin generated a linked list of pictures arranged by date for previous posts. There were a couple of issues with it though. First, it was cumbersome to read/see, requiring a lot of scrolling and such to see things. Second, not all pictures give as much insight to the post as the title does. In fact I am often whimsical in my selection of pictures as it relates to the subject matter. Lastly, the generation of the image link maps was tough on the CPU of the server, typically taking a huge load which was done on the fly whenever requested. The new archive system does the links as text-based, using the title of the blogs listed by current month first. It can easily expand out t all of them. Given the clean view of this, I have dropped the archive listing off the sidebar menu in lieu of using this for all archive access.
Speaking of the processor power involved, that is probably more than anything the driving force behind my flurry of updates. I have had some issues with the amount of CPU I have used on peak demand days for my hosting platform. So this update started as streamline the processes and make them more efficient. From that I decided on also cleaning up the look and feel of the blog while in the process. Hence the reason so many extra widgets and such have been dropped off the sidebars.
Still to come will be some updates on the networks menu (currently not shown). Right now I decided to drop them off completely, as I really need to revisit the value of having those links to external pages along with the graphics associated with them and the processor power to show them against the gain they bring. I fully expect to add a couple back into the mix and perhaps explore an additional one or two while dropping a couple of them that are not really relevant to the site anymore.
Additionally, as it is the chief revenue generating source for all my blogs (which barely covers the hosting cost mind you) I am looking at the possibility of an additional Google Adsense Ad display at the bottom of all posts. I am very much in favor of this, as it is where ads most often seem to be clicked. I am must not sure of the placement and logistics at this point. There is a plugin (Easy AdSense) that arranges it for WordPress, but it seems to be heavy on CPU resources and has consistency issues with how/where ads are displayed based on my experience in general. Likely, it will be an add bar located at or near the bottom of the posts, coming from an additional line or two added to the theme.
Here is to more posts coming up, as it is spring and the cleaning is done, I feel like planting something now and I seem to be limited this year to words…
