Notes on WordPress, php, html, css, search engines, and anything else that I think is worth remarking on.
Getting back in the saddle - I wrote the PHP code for the sidebar navigation, as nothing very good seems to exist in the WordPress world.
The main navigation node at the upper-right shows the path to where you're at with a breadcrumb trail, the page you're on, and any siblings and children. It also incorporates the Blog.
More: WordPress Coding ...
WordPress image handling has been getting worse since at least version 5.5. In their arrogance, the programmers are sabotaging the user in every way they can. I'm still finding and fixing damage. It's really aggravating that there is no way to turn off all the nonsense. These programmers are truly idiots. Thankfully, with php you can hack the code yourself, and that is exactly what I did, and then made it automatic. Simple, my WordPress theme, now searches out the bad code and disables it. No more image insanity.
I finally got the WordPress image mess sorted out. Additionally, I resized all the images to fit in a 1000x1000 box. ( I kept backups of the originals. ) 1000x1000 is larger than the largest an image will display on this layout, about 800x800, so I have some upgrade room in the future if I want it. At the same time, it shrinks the files by 60-70%. Making even smaller images would be only slightly better, and I want to keep everything simple.
More: WordPress Image Mess Sorted Out ...
WordPress image handling is completely insane, and they don't ask and they don't give you a choice. Not only does it idiotically generate image titles from EXIF data ( usually the camera name! ) but it generates masses of extra files, wasting disk space, clogging up the server, and making any sort of manual image management near-impossible. What a behind-the-scenes disaster.
More: WordPress is a PIG ...
Yet another feature of WordPress that really doesn't work well is the Media Library. The problem is when you have a great many images, it really bogs down and becomes very difficult to find anything. To make it run faster, set the thumbnail size to 200x200, and use the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin to do what it says. This will result in true thumbnails that will load almost as fast as you can scroll.
More: WordPress Media Library ...
Gargle consistently hits new pages within minutes of me publishing them. It used to take weeks, then days. I figured it would take at least a few hours, but I have WordPress automatically submitting everything to Gargle, and they are responding in just minutes. I know because my Gargle watchdog tells me. They must have a hell of a lot of hardware working on this. Or maybe I am really special to them.
More: Wow! Gargle ...
Several years ago, I did a lot of work with WordPress. It was no bed of roses then, but it was usable. You could design a nice site and then hand it off to less-skilled ( read: cheaper ) people to maintain, and that model worked very well for a business.
More: Yikes, WordPress Has Gotten Worse ...
I put the finishing touches on the web stats programming, and after a few days I can confirm that most of the traffic on the internet is bots. That is, machines querying other machines. Only about 20-25% of the traffic is human beings. So if you're one of those, consider yourself special.
More: Is This Worth It? ...