I decided it’s time to do a bit of housekeeping around here. I haven’t changed the theme or appearance of the blog (that may come later), but I have been working on links, static info, and some behind-the-scenes stuff that I hope will make life easier for this old blogger.
Sadly, it seems that blogging is a dying art. As I was working on my “Other Voices” page it distressed me that most of the links are now inactive. If the page is no longer accessible I removed the link. However, if the page is still there but just inactive, I left the link intact so that archives could still be read.
I also updated my “Resources” and “Photos” page, mostly just removing broken links and outdated material. I’m still working on the outdated stuff, but at least links should work. As for the photos, I fixed the link that displays my Flickr portfolio. You should now see a large block of photos. If you click on the title or on any photo it will take you to the portfolio album on Flickr, where you can view a larger version of the photo.
Probably the biggest changes are on the back end of the blog. I’ve been creating blog posts very old school, editing directly in HTML. It’s habit, plus it gave me greater control over appearance with my Flickr images. WordPress has now come out with the new Gutenberg editor. For the next few posts I’m going to give it a shot and see if it helps or hurts my writing style.
I can fool around with block quote placements, like this…
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum a dictum enim, id interdum dui. Pellentesque varius massa at risus dignissim sagittis. Quisque tempor turpis id odio finibus vulputate. Sed tempor justo eu interdum porta.
Subheadings
Yeah, I can now do those, too. That will make it easier to break up those massively long posts for which I’m notorious.
The biggest issue is going to be with images. I’ve tried several plug-ins to incorporate my Flickr images in a WYSIWYG editor, but they have never quite worked right. Using the new Gutenberg blocks I’m hoping that this is an easier workflow.
Apparently with the theme I’m using I can’t change the alignment of my Flickr images nor the alignment of the caption. The image above looks a bit screwy with the caption centered. However, I can make the text flow around images easier. It also looks like I’m stuck with one size image. Fortunately I like that size, so for now I’m OK with it.
One thing I do like is that the new Flickr embed code strips out all of the old script that cluttered up the images. If you click on the image it will still take you to the old page, but I don’t have the extraneous code that tended to mess up the post’s appearance on various platforms.
With the new blocks I can also embed media from other sources without having to copy tedious HTML codes. Here’s an audio clip from SoundCloud.
I’ll see how this goes. I’ve got a couple of new posts in the hopper that might work well with the new Gutenberg settings. At least it looks nicer as I’m editing. I can still switch back to good old HTML if I get frustrated with this.