I have been planning to add an “About” page to this site for about four years. Everybody who’s anybody has an “About” page. People who visit and know not what a blog is must wonder what this site is “About”. I just never seem to get around to it. I have no idea what this site is “About”. And every time I take a crack at it I can never seem to be as pithy as all the other great “About” pages I’ve seen on blogs over the years.
But I do know how I made this site. And — more or less — I can tell you when I made this site. So I guess I’ll do that and call it an “About” page.
First I’ll tell you the “How”:
- This site is currently published using a CMS called WordPress. I utilize (and have built) quite a few “plugins” for WordPress to make my life easier. You can see all the plugins that I use here on my plugins page.
- This site — like the dozen or so other ones I run — is hosted at Dreamhost.
- I write most of my posts right in the WordPress editing screen. For longer posts, or to edit templates or code, I use a text editor called EditPad. I’ve used this handy text editor since at least 1996. It’s basically a souped-up version of Notepad, the silly little program that comes with Windows.
- I am not an artist. Most of the graphics here are ones I’ve found on the internet. The few custom ones I made myself using Adobe Photoshop and a ton of banging my head on the desk. If you’re interested, you can see all of my header logo files.
- When I want to move files from my laptop to my site, I use WS_FTP, the same file transfer program that I have been using since 1996.
That’s really it. It’s not that complicated. I am what most people would consider “old school”.
Now the “When”:
2024-01-21: Broken links in this post have been removed and/or updated.
2024-04-10: After the Now the “When” above, there previously existed a WordPress Shortcode I wrote that displayed a “sub blog” detailing each of the major revisions I’d made to the site as of Nov 1, 2006. That shortcode no longer works and I’ve never bothered to take the time to fix it. I also no longer use Notepad (or any Microsoft product save our two Xbox consoles). I now use Apple for everything. I love Nova for editing code, from the brilliant folks at Panic and all my file transfers either happen there or via git commits directly to Github. You can read more about that on The Ultimate Guide to Local WordPress Development on a Mac.
You can do what I did for an “about” page. Most people have a “100 things” post. I made a “100 things” category… so, anytime I think of something, I’ll post it, rather than trying to think of 100 things all at once. Much easier that way.