Seriously Overworked… But Still Here!

I KNOW I haven’t been posting much at the site in the last month or two, but there has been a very good reason. Read more

Disaster Recovery Complete

I’M FINALLY BACK IN ACTION after a crazy few days. The technical issues that had plagued my PC have all been resolved and I’ve put a new backup solution in place to avoid the same happening to me again (hopefully), but it was a strange series of events that knocked me out of action to begin with. Read more

Technology Will Always Shit On You…

SORRY for the inactivity of the last few days folks, I’ve been trying to recover my computer from the depths of tech hell since it all went horribly wrong on Saturday afternoon last. I blame Nokia myself, but the long and short of it is that I’ve had to hand my PC in to be repaired. Read more

Yet Another Speed Bump, But Almost There…

I’VE HIT ANOTHER SPEED BUMP on the way to releasing the new version of my website folks; sorry for the – hopefully – last delay.

I was just about to release the new look and theme when the sodding developers released a new version of the base WordPress theme I’ve been extending, with enough changes to the base files that I need to now retrofit all the changes I’d been making in order to get the best usage from the theme itself.

All I can do is promise you that the new look is a major departure and I guess I should drop a few hints at this point about what you can expect.

For starters – you might have noticed I’m using consistent image sizes for recent posts, and that’s because I’m going for more of a magazine look to the new website, meaning a fixed width layout with consistent image sizes and thumnails for a more professional look.

I’ll also be featuring embedded videos of choice and providing some additional functionality for readers too. I plan to launch within a week (assuming I can retrofit the changes successfully) and then look to make more gradual changes over time, as the starting ones are so fundamental. Read more

Site Redesign Update

THIS IS JUST A QUICK UPDATE on the state of things in respect of the site migation and redesign. I have a cool new theme in the works with some funky new features and a completely redesigned front page almost ready to roll.

I have rethought the categories and content layout completely and am in the progress of mapping this onto the new design. I know there are still some bugs and issues with the current version of WordPress, so I am going to try to sync my site migration to a new hoster and the updating of the presentation layer with the release of the patched version of WP, which I understand is a couple of weeks away.

Sorry for the mess folks, it has taken a lot of work behind the scenes to deal with the issues and work on a compeltely new look and feel, but I think you will love it once it is up and running. More as it happens…

Site Fixed But Redesign & Migration In Progress…

I’M DELIGHTED to be able to report that the site issues of late (notably the inability to see pages displayed correctly as a result of a WordPress ugrade) have all been fixed. At least I think they have been, but if you notice anything out of whack please do let me know.

Regardless, I’ve decided to forge ahead with the new site design and migration to a Linux hosted environment. I expect I’ll have it all done in the next couple of weeks or so, and will do an update at the appropriate time.

If you have any suggestions for imprroving things around here then please do let me know and I’ll take them into consideration as part of the redesign.

Decision Made, Redesign & Migration Underway

OK. I’M OFFICIALLY PISSED OFF with the issues I’ve encountered since trying to update my site to the latest revision of WordPress and I’m overdue a site redesign anyway so I’ve taken the decision to move my hosting and site to a new hoster, under a Linux hosting plan, and at the same time I’m doing a complete site redesign and content reorganisation.

To put it simply I’m ripping the shit outta things here and will have it all up and running sometime soon under a completely new design with better categories, tagging, navigation and options. It’s going to be a lot of work, but I hope it will be worth it in the long run.

Right now my site pages are not displaying correctly (in WordPress terms these are the static pages versus the dynamic posts), so most of my navigation links to things like the privacy statement or my disclaimer etc. don’t work because of a bug in the upgrade.

I’m reworking all my categories, links, URLS and content from the ground up on this site first, then I intend to migrate all the content to the new setup, so please be patient while I screw with things at this end for a few days until it’s right. Then I guess I will either migrate to the new site first, get it all up and running then then upgrade the design of Avalon5, or else I’ll do the design first and then migrate into it.

Oh well – it’s never dull around here is it?