Jun
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It's Live!
2017
It's about a week later and we're finally deployed. I assume it works? I never know if it will once it's been deployed and I've had to flip various switches to ensure it's "production". I fully expect to spend the next hour frantically fixing things that didn't show up during local development, but it's always a nice surprise when things work first time - like this time. But enough of that; what's the point of this? I like reading development blogs, so once again I've began my own. At a guess, this is my third; originally they were called At the end of a day's development, I'll post here. Of course there won't be any posts for development-free days. Now to hit Submit to see if this works... |
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RSS Feed: Attempt 1
Like my main site I want to add an RSS feed to this one, except rather than write it myself I thought I'd make use of an existing package - why not, eh? Because it doesn't bloody work, that's why. Some service provider error in Laravel. Screw it - another day. Onto categories: unless you're me (lucky, lucky you), the way the filtering works probably doesn't make sense; I wasn't sure where I was going with it during the preliminary stages. Need to work on it later. Edit: Noticed that there is a problem with multiple posts on the same day; or, rather, an aesthetic issue rather than functional. The date and year aren't supposed to be displayed for posts that are on the same day. Works locally, so no idea why it doesn't on the actual server. |
Jun
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Fixed Date Grouping
2017
It appears the time was being included when comparing dates to determine if posts should be grouped under the same Added Analytics to the site - which I entirely forgot about, initially. |
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Sub-Sorting Problem
Had a bit of an issue - and still do - with sorting returned database results; all posts are returned in descending creation date order, which is expected. Unfortunately, due to the whole date-grouping-thing where multiple posts on the same day only use one date heading to reduce visual clutter, the posts for said day would be sorted in reverse, as a side-effect of the overreaching creation date ordering above. I briefly tried to perform a sub-sort as part of the initial SQL query but I didn't get anywhere. I'm still not sure how to fix this without creating additional arrays and sorting those. That'll be saved as a last resort. |
Jun
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Replace Main Site?
2017
Been wondering the last couple of days if I should replace the main BootBlock.co.uk site with this, instead? The main site was supposed to have a combination of quick updates like this and big, main articles - hence the Articles link on the side. But the problem is that the site feels too "bulky" and ill-suited to the quick-fire posts like these, so I'm wondering if I should just bin it and shove this in its place. Would be a shame to lose some of the articles, though, such as the Learning to Drive series. Need to think about it more; plus, if I do switch it over eventually, then they will be more content to see as I'm hoping to update this daily - if I do development every day. |
Jul
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Changing to Main Domain
2017
Okay, I've decided that I'm going to move this to the main BootBlock.co.uk domain tomorrow. I'm going to move over all of the previous articles and posts to this blog-thing in the morning as some may find them useful, and then see what happens when I shove the lot over. Unless I decide to add more features to this before putting it on the site proper. |
Jul
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Moved over to BootBlock.co.uk
2017
A little bit involved to do but now I've moved everything over from the previous sub-domain to here; new content will be gushing forth almost every day as opposed to the almost-yearly prior dribble. I've integrated AdSense, although the block above is too tall in my opinion. I'd prefer a single-line height but Google doesn't seem to like that too much these days. Might as well keep it to a standard size. Next up is sorting out the categories page so it makes sense and just generally works better. Maybe I made post categorisation too flexible... |
Jul
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Lost my First Post
2017
Yep, it was bound to happen - and it just did. Wrote a large post on my keyboard and wanting a mechanical replacement and hit Submit with the appropriate Oh, and of course, I'm very annoyed right now. |
Jul
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New Sections on BootBlock.co.uk
2017
When I moved this blog thing over from the sub-domain, I kinda forgot that the main site had various links on it to different places such as the forums, my software, and of course to contact me. Had a bit of a WTF moment the other day as I realised all of the said links were gone! No-one could view anything other than the absolute crud that I dribble onto here; it was only supposed to be a sub-domain and not the actual, main site. Well. That changed. I've now added a few sections at the top-right of this page; the main ones are links to my free and commercial software, and an area that contains contact information. And I've just realised that this site doesn't say who I actually am. |
Jul
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Donation Page
2017
While I was fixing up an application that I hadn't worked on in a while, I noticed that it linked to a donation page on the previous blog. A donation page that no longer existed when I revamped things; I've just been sorting that out. There's now a dedicated donate page and a link to it at the top of this very page. I'm honestly not really expecting much from it as my software was donation-ware for almost 20 years and, well, it didn't exactly go very well. This forced me to finally start writing commercial software and stop giving it away for free. Well, there are "free editions" available so they can still be used for free if you don't require the more advanced features (and aren't particularly bothered about supporting the software). I couldn't bring myself to put the software entirely behind a paywall. Shame, really. (Incidentally, this is why there isn't a "next generation" of Comica as I can't really charge for it and I can no longer give away software for free) |