Tag: doug belshaw

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Recently I saw a post on Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel pointing to a nice 3 column layout for a blog.

Doug wondered :

If you’re reading this and know of a similar blog theme, on any platform, could you let me know?

I thought it would be possible to use the Site Editor on a WordPress block theme and left a comment.

I’ve been watching quite a few WordPress videos from Jamie WP. I especially like his Remaking Famous Websites playlist. So I thought it might be possible to make a WordPress site that looked a bit like garry.net.

Jamie does these in 30 minutes. This took me longer, but I’ve not a whole lot of experience with the site editor. I decided to use Glow Blogs. It is free and easy for me to set up a site there. I serve as part time product owner so this is good practise. The disadvantage is that I can’t install any extra plug-ins or add any custom css1. Glow Blogs also runs a version or so behind WordPress.org.

I only did enough to see where I could go easily. I didn’t attempt to match styles or other features.

I got as far as Three Columns, this is not finished or polised but I managed:

  1. 1. a home page with some static content and a left hand navigation.
  2. a posts page with the same left hand column. A second column listing the posts and loading the latest post in the third column.
  3. finally a single post page with the same first two columns. The post tapped or clicked in the second column showing in the third.

To do this I created three page templates2. All are inside columns. All have the same first column. So I made that one as a pattern3. The second column is used twice, so I made another pattern for that. This stopped me having to fix the same thing in different places. I think this is the right approach.

I’ve ignored mobile and other possible pages. I didn’t touch archive, views for categories and tags for example . My aim was to spend a couple of hours on this.

I had trouble with a few things.

  • I had edited the Front Page Template, which should be used for the posts page. This didn’t show up. When I edit the posts page and then edit the template I see my 3 column. Unfortunately the live page still uses the old template. So given my time limit I just made another page to act as the posts page and made an ‘All posts’ template for that. This has a query loop in the second column, acting as an index for the posts.
  • The second column on the Posts & single post page should ideally scroll all of the posts. Probably inside a fixed height block with lazy load.
  • I think I should have used Template parts when I used patterns. but the result seems the same.
  • I am not sure how to hilight the posts selected in the second column. garry.net does this nicely.
  • I enjoyed poking around in the site editor. I can see the potential for creating different types of site. I am not convinced that access to the Site Editor alone would make much differences to busy teachers with a lot on their plate. Most Glow Blogs stick with the default theme. I am beginning to see how patterns and templates could make things easier for folk.
  1. WordPress multi-sites do not automatically support custom css. The Jetpack plugin used to do this but not anymore. I hope it will be added back in. ↩︎
  2. Well I did that finally, I made lots of mistakes first. ↩︎
  3. Again I did that a more than a few times. I think this should have been a template part rather than a pattern. ↩︎

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Replied to Bright green, blight green, and lean green futures | Open Thinkering by Doug Belshaw (Open Thinkering | Doug Belshaw's blog)
This is Vinay’s preferred option, and the only one he thinks is scalable and realistic. It’s “numerical” by which he means quantitative, not qualitative. You simply imagine that every human being has equal right to the planet’s “material bounty”, and then divide up what’s available, and how much they can emit.

Hi Doug,

Thanks for this link, I’d not heard Vinay Gupta before. A good listen although some of the verbal style grated a bit.  I’d heard the idea of fair shares, in relation to air miles, before and liked it. Possibly because I very seldom fly;-)

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Listened Microcast #087 — Back in the game! by Doug BelshawDoug Belshaw from Doug Belshaw's Thought Shrapnel
In this microcast, I go through three interesting links from my saved list on Pocket.

Nice to hear Doug again particularly in micro format. I do love a microcast. Lots of podcasts, especially 2 or 3 hosts chatting I find a bit long. I’d rather queueup a few shorter ones for a commute.

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Replied to Parasocial relationships through digital media by Doug BelshawDoug Belshaw (Doug Belshaw's Thought Shrapnel)
I think we've all felt a close affinity and, dare I say, relationship with people who wouldn't know who we were if we met them in real life. In fact, I've kind of experienced the other side of this due to my TEDx Talk and the TIDE podcast. People at events would come and talk to me as if they knew m

On the other end, this makes me feel a bit uncomfortable listening to some podcasts. I used to listen to quite a few popular mac/tech podcasts, but the feeling that I knew these folk was somehow quite unpleasant. 1. I don’t & 2. I live in a very different world. They are often over long with a lot of friendly, between presenters, chat. I now keep an eye and dip in occasionally when the topic looks good thank to Castro’s triage.

Tide, I very much enjoyed because I had met irl Doug and virtually Dai. My own broadcasting/podcasting efforts  were mostly aimed at folk just like me. I’d guess I knew many of our audience.

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Replied to Refactoring extinction.fyi | Open Thinkering by Doug Belshaw (Open Thinkering | Doug Belshaw's blog)
Creating an RSS feed that also works as a styled web page.

Hi Doug,
I was wondering what was going on, the old feed was behaving strangely in my reader. The new one works really nicely in inoreader.

I do get different behaviour in different browsers. Firefox, where I’ve an RSS extension, shows the RSS; Safari offers to open the feed in NetNewsWire RSS reader; Chrome shows the webpage.

Alan’s comment about pinboard is interesting, I used to have a sort of tumble blog running off the rss from my delicious links.

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Replied to Learning through frustration | Open Thinkering by Doug Belshaw (dougbelshaw.com)
the assumption that everything can be broken down into a sequence that can (and should) be learned by people in the same order. I just think, for me at least, learning doesn’t work like that.

Learning does not work for me like that either Doug, serendipity, excitement, rabbit holes & fascination are usually the drivers for me.

something kicks in

& then I am lost in it. I often believe this will change lots of things and emerge blinking to reality.

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Replied to If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can be very creative about it (thoughtshrapnel.com)
Friluftsliv, the Norwegian Concept of Outdoor Living

Friluftsliv, the Norwegian Concept of Outdoor Living

Was an interesting read I don’t mind being out in the cold so much, but the combination of cold & wet we get here especially with added wind can be more unpleasant.