As I’ve written about before, I finally switched over my site. I plan to continue maintaining my takeonrules.wordpress.com blog, as there are several of you that subscribe to my blog posts via email or Wordpress Reader. Please consider switching to my Rich Site Summary (RSS) feed, as I don’t yet know how long I will maintain the wordpress site.
During this migration, I removed a tremendous amount of what I came to see as clutter. I refocused the blog for reading longer form articles.
I compressed the navigation to more narrow concerns. The about page links to previous top-level navigation items.
Comparison
Gone is much of the cruft injected by Wordpress.
Let’s examine my Burning Wheel Lifepaths Inspired by Warhammer Fantasy post (see previous site).
You’ll first notice, the styling. I have extreme control over the new table rendering. In fact, I now use Jekyll to read through a Yet Another Markup Language (YAML 📖) data file to populate those tables; Each lifepath table will now have a consistent look and feel. Important as I work at creating other lifepaths. The control extends everywhere on the site.
Second, the old Wordpress site’s page requires 112 Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP 📖) requests and transfers 1.3 Megabyte (MB 📖) of data. The new static site page requires 9 requests, transferred 146 KiloByte (kB 📖) of data. What this means for you? Far faster load times; For those of you with metered data or slow connections, you’re welcome.
Third, compare the print preview of each site. I love the new printed look.
The Little Things
I’ve ensured you need not use Javascript. To get a sense of traffic to the site, I did setup Google Analytics; But feel free to turn on your ad-blocking and disable Javascript. The site will continue working just fine. Though there is one caveat; When javascript is disabled, the Search feature shifts away from the Javascript requiring Google’s Custom Search Engine. Instead, I provide a search button to directing the user to Google’s basic search with the prepopulated “site:takeonrules.com”. update: I have also started using the DataTables jQuery plugin for my Metadata pages. The tables will work just fine without javascript. With javascript you get some lovely search and sort behavior.
I’ve tried to build towards an accessible experience, leveraging accessibility guidelines from Penn State
Go to the top of the page, click the top left corner, then hit the tab key. I love that feature. I learned that from a Skip Links accessibility tutorial. And for the extra-tech people, fire up a lynx browser.
I have packed the site with Schema.org metadata, as I try to assist our machine overlords in better understanding the content so they can provide you with more contextual information. See Schema Demystified: Schema Markup and the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Benefits for more details
In leveraging Jekyll update: I have switched to using Hugo for my blogging engine. While not proficient in Go, I appreciate the almost one-hundred fold speed increase in my website build times. , I can write, edit, and preview my blog offline; A nice to have when traveling or when our shaky internet craps out.
Whither Goes the Comments?
I removed comments. A todo item, albeit low on the priority list, is to attach the historical comments to their respective commentss. . Instead, feel free to contact Me; From there we can have a conversation I will only post comments or excerpts that you give after getting your express consent
Also, consider writing your reply on your own blog; And drop me a line to draw attention to your post. There are many free and easy-to-use platforms for blogging.
Whither Goes the Banner?
Ye ol’ banner for takeonrules.wordpress.com
I love that old banner. My partner surprised me with a series of photos she took in celebration of launching my old site. I’m trying to track down the source images for that banner. The largest image I have found so far is 1000px by 288px. I need at least 1280px by X; even then, I don’t know where I might find a place for that. Perhaps converting the Take on Rules in the header to a badge?
Onward
The plan is to keep on blogging. I’m eager to get back to writing more game related posts, and wrap up these meta posts about blogging and frameworks.