A quick note to mention some scheduled maintenance. The About page has been revamped to hopefully provide some additional information about Consolation Prize, Myself, and to include some specific information regarding comments, review policy, and copyright.
Archive for the ‘Maintenance’ Category
I took the plunge this weekend to update Consolation Prize to the latest version of Wordpress. I got fed up of the dashboard telling me that it was out of date and decided it was time to run the upgrade gauntlet. Apart from a few scares - for a time I couldn’t log into the site - we’re now back up and running and I’m not aware of any issues after testing all the various aspects of the site.
Hopefully downtime was kept to a minimum, but at least I can now return to the important business of completing Braid and Half Life 2: Episode 2.
I am considering updating the template and layout of the site, and I would especially like a new blog header (grey is a bit.. well… grey and boring) but I’m afraid my logo design skills are frankly quite poor. If anyone knows of any freelance designers out there then be sure to let me know!
I’ve finally managed to track down the issue with Internet Explorer 7 which was cropping the first image on the site. It’s a known issue when using italic text when next to a floating image which thus explains why it appeared to be an intermittent problem. I’m not sure why my Google searches didn’t point me in the right direction sooner but nevermind, all is well in the end, at least with Firefox and IE7!
The solution: I’ve added in “position:relative” to my CSS image class.
Also, I’ve been using Twitter for a little while now and it’s a handy little micro-blogging service which I think will be beneficial to Consolation Prize, so the sidebar now contains my latest three “Tweets”. If you’re a Twitter user then look me up, follow my updates, and I’ll of course reciprocate your kindness.
Just a quick note to mention that it had been brought to my attention that some image hot links may not have been working correctly, especially in relation to feed readers and probably resulted in the image not showing and a “404 Error” when clicked.
I think this was mainly due to my server hot link protection and “.htaccess” file configuration. I’ve hopefully now enabled access to the majority of web based readers that are currently subscribed and images should now start displaying correctly for future posts.
Anyway, no doubt some gremlins may still be lurking around so if there are any problems feel free to drop me an email or leave a comment and I’ll look into it. Apologies for any inconvenience.
Just a quick note to mention another aesthetic change. The standard Wordpress category listing has been replaced by a “Tag Cloud” which I think gives a more immediate visual representation of categories and the weighting of posts withing each category. I will also start introducing tags to posts to further help navigation.
I’m pretty happy with the changes that have been implemented over the last couple of days and I now feel I can take a break from the “site maintenance” and refocus my efforts on gaming once more!
I’m not sure where the time has gone this week but I’ve not really had the chance to sit down and play games. I have however managed to add a couple of new plugins to Consolation Prize.
Gravatars have been added to the post comments section. I will probably mess around with the layout a bit more, moving and resizing the Gravatar when time permits.
In addition the single post page now has the additional section Similar Articles at the bottom of the post, which should hopefully list up-to five similar posts.
Well, I’ve spent most of the weekend setting up Consolation Prize to a point where I’m reasonably happy with the results. I’ve settled on (and tinkered) with a theme, installed some interesting plugins and set-up information pages (contact, archive, about). Ironically enough after all that effort I’ve noticed that version 2.5 is now available. Doh! Oh-well, I’ll upgrade when I’ve checked compatibility.
Feel free to let me know what you think of the new layout, personally I think it’s a step in the right direction. There will be more site updates to come as I become more familiar with WordPress, but for now I can’t think of anything urgent which leaves me free to get on with some gaming at last!
In case you’ve not noticed (or missed the dull default template) I’ve implemented the first phase of moving Consolation Prize to a new host using WordPress instead of blogger. I’m sure there’s going to be some teething problems and there’s a lot of work to be done design and style wise, but at least the existing content is up and running.
First impressions of WordPress are great. It seems much easier to use and using my own host will give me more control over the site. However, at the moment it’s a bit daunting swapping the familiar, but limited blogger, for the unknown path I’m now treading.
However, there’s only so many hours in the day so I offer my apologies while I get everything back up and running.
