Tag Archives: Wordpress

Why I Switched to Poster

You may have noticed some changes here recent­ly. Here’s a hint: fresh con­tent! Want to know my secret? The Poster app! Now I know we’ve all heard that the iPad is not a con­tent-cre­ation device, but I’m find­ing it pret­ty easy myself. In fact, I haven’t reopened my Mac­Book once, not even to change my blog theme!

Why do I like it so much? It does­n’t try to do any­thing more than allow you to draft, sched­ule and pub­lish con­tent. I don’t need a read­er baked into the app, or to see stats on my per­son­al blog. I just want to dive in and bang out 250–500 words about some­thing I liked enough to write about. Like Poster! If you want to start using your iPad for blog­ging, you should check it out.

I’ve Rejoined Tumblr

You can fol­low Ram­say­ings: The Tum­blr by your pre­ferred method. Since I fol­low a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of music crit­ics there, it may be where I enter con­ver­sa­tions about stuff like that? Or pos­si­bly techi­er things? Or social media things? It’s a gar­den that’s grow­ing very quick­ly and I’m scram­bling to keep up.

And, yes, I think I’ve decid­ed to main­tain both Word­Press and Tum­blr plat­forms in some way or oth­er indef­i­nite­ly. Social media is a cru­el mis­tress. I guess it would be cru­el­er if I were also vlog­ging or something.

I Need a New WordPress Theme!

Clean­r’s been great to me. Taught me the val­ue of a clean inter­face, with dead sim­ple nav­i­ga­tion. The prob­lem? It’s not sim­ple enough. Not a year goes by that I don’t real­ize how impor­tant it is to present infor­ma­tion com­plete­ly free from noise when­ev­er pos­si­ble. What does that mean? An end to two-col­umn theme, at least for me.

Thus, I throw myself at the mer­cy of the Inter­net to help me find the fol­low­ing: an ele­gant one-col­umn theme with dead sim­ple nav­i­ga­tion and a beau­ti­ful­ly inte­grat­ed “fol­low” suite where I can plug in links to my Twit­ter, Flickr, and oth­er accounts. To be per­fect­ly hon­est, if Flavors.me offered some­thing akin to Tum­blr, I’d jump in a heartbeat.

Why not Tum­blr, you ask? Too insid­ery for my tastes. Sure, I don’t try to gen­er­ate bat­ty pageviews here at Kens­ing­ton Blues, but I’m not try­ing to impress an arma­da of fol­low­ers either. Influ­ence ped­dling is not some­thing I want to get too wrapped up in out­side of work, if you catch my drift. More impor­tant­ly, I have yet to find a Tum­blr theme that does­n’t make actu­al words seem like unwel­come guests on the page. I think Tum­blr’s great for meme gen­er­a­tion and is home to a lot of fun stuff on the web, but I just don’t think I can com­mit to Tum­blr as my sole out­let online. (Don’t even get me start­ed about main­tain­ing sep­a­rate chan­nels in my per­son­al life.)

Hav­ing said all that, I do appre­ci­ate Tum­blr’s ele­gance. Be gone, use­less blogroll! No one clicks on you any­way! Good­bye, archives! The peo­ple will use search instead! You get the picture.

Ide­al­ly, I’d love to strip the extra­ne­ous ele­ments out of this theme and adapt it for my pur­pos­es. If you’re the sort of per­son who reads this and thinks that is pos­si­ble, let me know!

A Cleanr Look

If you’re one of the dear souls who sub­scribes to this under­used blog you already know how I’ve ago­nized over a suit­able theme. The search may final­ly be over. I think I’ve final­ly found a winner!

I chose Cleanr. It’s a straight­for­ward theme that fits my strict aes­thet­ic needs. I’m in love with the right rail, too! There you’ll find my Twit­ter updates, Flickr pho­tos, and Google Read­er shared items. I think it’s the best inte­gra­tion I’ve found yet. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about that space is that it’s prone to clutter.

I’m look­ing to add a Last.fm cov­er­flow wid­get to share the albums I’m check­ing out on Lala.com. If you can rec­om­mend one with a lay­out sim­i­lar to the Flickr wid­get, let me know!

On a part­ing note, I need to say that Word­Press has real­ly made it easy to update and change themes and wid­gets. I’m a total noob, yet I felt very com­fort­able try­ing things out in the new dash­board envi­ron­ment. It’s amazing!