All posts tagged WordPress

U+1F92A

 Martin · 2 years

A while ago I tried making a post here with an emoji in it, because WordPress supports that now, and the characters always came up blank after I submitted the form.

Investigating why this was happening sent me down a WordPress rabbit hole. The cause I arrived at is that, because my WordPress install has some long roots, the underlying database didn't support the character set required by emojis. The solution was to update the database, which isn't something WordPress can do by itself.

Being a DIY guy (when it comes to tech, anyway) I read a little more about what was involved, backed everything up, and dove headfirst into the database. Not long after, I resurfaced from my edits, made a post with an emoji, and basked in its glory. I checked a few other posts to make sure the rest of my database was still intact, and satisfied with the results, left things at that.

You can guess where this is going: unseen problems were afoot. Technically, they still are, I suppose.

Not long after the update, I noticed that one of my main pages was almost entirely blank. WordPress couldn't recover it, so I loaded up my backup and dug through the SQL code to find the post and restore it. It took some time to sort everything out (this particular page had a lot of formatting), but it was fixed.

Curious, I started looking through other posts/pages. Most were okay, but the further back into my blog's history, the more missing pages I encountered. Many of these posts contained characters that didn't survive the database edits, and they got cut off at random points.

So now I'm aware of this problem, and I've been slowly combing through the dusty, cobwebbed corners of the site, cleaning things up and restoring lost posts when necessary. Most of it isn't really worth preserving, honestly. But I feel bad leaving it in such a rough state - and I've been mildly enjoying following my own path as I read things I wrote 15 years ago.

Good grief, I'm feeling old! 👴

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Streaking

 Martin · 3 years

Well, I'm a little disappointed in myself - I had a 109 day streak going posting on my blog here, and I accidentally broke it yesterday because I forgot to post something!. It had been going since August, when I started doing my Drawgust posts!

Oh well - so it goes. Now the pressure's off, I guess!

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Taming Gutenberg

 Martin · 3 years

My work on the next iteration of this website is coming along well! My to-do list has been steadily shrinking, and most everything is looking just how I like it. As always, I've started having misgivings about the new color scheme, but I can tweak that as I go - no use getting stuck on that at this late stage of production!

Really, all that's left now is to tie up a few loose ends here and there, make some last-minute adjustments to my template names, make sure everything works alright on mobile... and hit the big, red Activate button. The closer I get, the more tempting it is to just push it and clean things up later, but I will control myself (for now).

I know nearly nobody is reading this, but I don't care - I like shouting into the void. If you're out there and reading this - thanks!

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Working on WordPress

 Martin · 3 years

Making new themes for WordPress is fun and always a surprisingly complicated affair. The amount of pages you have to edit seems like not so much at first - and then you start tearing into the logic and stuff that's going on behind the scenes, and things really start getting crazy.

Anyway, the new theme for the website is coming along. I hope to have it done in... a month? We'll see.

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Website Redesign, 2013 Edition

 Martin · 11 years

If you're a frequent visitor of my website (and why would you be, honestly?) you might have noticed that the site's look has changed a bit over the last few days.

Well, as you might've guessed, I've updated the website's theme again, and will be continuing to make improvements and adjustments over the coming days / weeks. This is an effort to both make the website more clear, as well as take it away from the stark look it had since the last revision. A spring cleaning, with a little bit of fashion, if you will.

If you happen upon something that looks weird drop me a note and I'll check it out. Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the new look!

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Marty Blog Theme Update

 Martin · 15 years

As you've probably noticed, I've changed out the theme for Marty Blog again - but this time I feel like I'm really giving it the proper attention it deserves, with something a little more unique, and a lot better to look at.

The new theme is very loosely based on the excellent PrimePress Wordpress theme by Ravi Varma. It also makes use of QuadGrunged, an awesome set of Photoshop brushes by env1ro.

There are still a few quirks I'm working out, like getting the search page functional again and adding a few of the widgets that I had added manually in the last iteration. I'm also considering changing out the header image, or having it be randomly switched out or something; it's a work in progress, I suppose. Overall, I really like the direction I've taken the theme, and I hope that everyone out there who drops in to read the blog likes it too!

If you encounter any odd problems with it, have questions, praise, or just feel like posting a comment on a website, drop me a line below. Thanks for reading!

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Quick Reflect Competition & WordPress 2.7

 Martin · 16 years

I just wanted to post a quick note to tell everyone about two things, the currently on-going Reflect Games Competition and WordPress 2.7.

First, the Reflect Games Competition - it began last night, and is ending at midnight PST on December 21. The challenge is to make a cut scene in Game Maker, pretty much however you want. The rules are lax and the time is short, so read more about that at the Reflect Games forum, and consider throwing something together - you could win a little holiday fun in the form of Steam games, Amazon goods, or iTunes music!

Second, I installed WordPress 2.7 RC1 a few days ago, and all went smoothly... I'm not even sure that I had more than about 30 seconds of downtime. Today, the official release of WordPress 2.7 was released, and I got my first chance to try out the automatic upgrade function. So far, I love it! Instead of having to download, unzip, and upload a bunch of files, I can now upgrade the entire blog at the push of a button. The WordPress team deserves a resounding "good job" from everyone who uses and supports their software for this - they really did an excellent job.

Anyway, I'd better get back to work for now, but thanks for stopping in to see what's going on, and good luck with the contest if you decide to enter it! The raffle for Marty Blog is still being planned, so don't miss these two opportunities to win some stuff!

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WordPress 2.7 Looming

 Martin · 16 years

With the upcoming release of WordPress 2.7, I'm considering redesigning the look of this blog - especially if the current theme fails to be compatible.

The official release of 2.7 will be in 5 days (on December 10th), but I'll probably change over to Release Candidate 1 before that, at which point I will disable themes and plug-ins so as to determine which will work and which will not without affecting the uptime of the site too much. So if Marty Blog goes "vanilla" and reverts back to the default WordPress theme for a while in the coming days, don't worry - it's just Marty tinkerin' with the new WordPress.

It's funny how these sorts of things grow on you - a few years ago I had neither the time nor the interest in maintaining a blog. When I finally came around and felt it might be an interesting endeavor, I entered into it a bit timidly, and spent lots of time trying to figure out which software would be the most versatile, and the easiest to use. WordPress had a nice, clean look to it, and looking over the feature list and stumbling upon many sites that used it helped push me over the edge to try it out.

It turned out that my investigating paid off - and I've been enjoying WordPress for over a year now. The number of updates and the quality of the plug-ins available has always impressed me, and I hope that I can say the same moving forward into the big changes with version 2.7 over the coming weeks.

If you're interested in blogging, I recommend giving WordPress a shot. You'll probably like it!

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