Blog, Site and RSS Updates

There’s been some changes around here…

There’s been some minor UI updates via the CSS, and some Liquid template improvements, along with a fix for the local site search feature.

Behind the scenes I’ve changed my writing setup to a combine the blog into my ever present markdown notes, which run on Obsidian and Syncthing.

Let me know what you think about the changes below in the comments…

Saying that, there’s been some changes to the comment system too.

TLDR; the comments section now works by email (with optional PGP) rather than Twitter or Mastodon.

You’ll find my new public email address and its PGP key dotted around the site for getting in touch. Although it does have some spam protection, please do not publish it elsewhere.

I would eventually like to streamline and rebuild the site completely, rather than basing it on a heavily modified klisé for jekyll theme.

As soon as I have the time, I’m sure to get on that.

I’ll also overhaul the RSS feed generation, currently I’m using the generic jekyll-feed plugin, and it’s not great.

Those of you reading this via the feeds will have poor post formatting, no reply link and no RSS Club! (🤯) - unless of course your RSS reader scrapes the site for the full article. I’d like to improve on this at some point soon.

There’s also been a feed bug in some RSS readers where the post ID’s were not respected for read status. If you’re an RSS reader, you may have missed out on some backdated posts, so do checkout the posts archive if you’d like to double-check.

I’ve also set up an “RSS explained” page for those new to the wonder-drug of feeds, and those looking for my feeds.

I did write about the importance of RSS lately here, and I’ve started to publish a list of blogs, sites and feeds I enjoy as a sort of blogroll here, it even has it’s own feed.

The Big News! (well at least for me)

I’m starting to collate all my projects and software into once place.

This will be a showcase for some of the projects I’ve blogged about over the years.

Some of it is free and open-source software along with some of my paid templates and applications too (eventually…).

I’m affectionately calling this project page “The Backend Shop”.

Although yes, I’ll likely be selling some bits here too, it’s more of a “shop” in terms of workshop than ecommerce.

Honestly, I just like the idea of collating my wares in the style of an 18th century wooden and rippled glass frontage chandler or cobbler, but with a 21st centenary spin.

Let me know if you think “The Backend Workshop” would work better.

Thanks, Ben

Comments & Questions

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