Assorted Fish A More Or Less Async Feed Of What I’m Up To I made quite a few modifications to my site since my last changelog. Published/updated some pagesAdded new menu itemsRemoved some irrelevant social media linksNixed the IG feed at the bottom of my siteAnd replaced the above with what I’m now having lots of fun using — portfolio projects, more on this in a bit! I’ve been constantly searching for a way to integrate a feed of images into my site. Images that, for the most part, represent daily moments I think are significant. I of course know ways and workarounds to achieve this: IG Feed — a straightforward method but limiting. First, the feed is coming from a third-party platform. Secondly, I like to keep my IG account exclusive to only my close circle of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances of my choice. Almost everything I share here is not free for the world to view. So in other words, no bueno.‘Image’ Posts — I tried this a while back as a microblog experiment during my last team meetup. The thing about doing this is it doesn’t quite capture the essence of the type of ‘micro’ publishing experience I’m looking for.Manual Updating — This is publishing a static page with images, then when I have something new, I’d go back to that page and add the new images. This is too stone age for my liking. And then I discovered the beauty of Portfolio Projects. I know I’m not using it exactly for its designed purpose, but it’s working how I want it to. When it comes to publishing posts, I’m inclined to writing in long-form. During my microblog experiment in Shirahama, I still ended up writing short descriptions to accompany my image posts, but these were literally just fleeting thoughts that I still felt didn’t deserve a post of it’s own or belong in the Reader feed. I just wanted to highlight a picture like the way I would on IG, but not have it published in the Reader. Like I mentioned previously, if I publish something, it’s going to be long-form. That’s where portfolio projects come in. Using a combination of adding projects, my current theme design, and portfolio shortcode, I was able to achieve an IG-like feed at the bottom of my site. In Rosalie’s ‘pre-footer’ widget area, I have it setup so that ALL recently added portfolio projects will display. The maximum amount of projects that could be displayed are 6 at a time. The whole idea stemmed from when I created my Office Today page. The shortcode above includes attributes that achieve the following: remove any content from displaying, only my ‘office today’ projects are shown, remove the project type from displaying, show the most recent at the top, and finally columns are set to 2. On this page, I wanted to have a gallery of featured images I’ve taken at my various ‘offices’, but at the same time I also wanted it to dynamically update whenever I added a new one. I also did not want or need these updates to be in the Reader. The portfolio functionality + shortcode seemed to fit the bill perfectly. And then I thought, if I could do this on a single page, what if I could do it in the footer of my site? Sure enough, using a text widget in Rosalie’s conveniently placed ‘pre-footer widget area’, I was able to place the shortcode there to display all projects which would go on to serve as my ‘what I’m up to’ feed. I created some basic project types for common images I usually post on i.e. food, office today, places, things. Since portfolio projects function the same way as posts, I’m also able to add additional content to my liking. The icing on the cake would have been if the mobile app had the ability to publish portfolio projects, then that would have been oh so sweet money sauce… I might just need to send that idea to our developers. In the meantime, if you are interested in staying ‘in the loop’ with what I’m up to with this current experiment (although I think it’s here to stay), the only way to check is either by visiting the front-end of my site to see if I posted something new (portfolio projects don’t get published in the Reader), or by perhaps following my Twitter, the only social media account I have that I’m willing to Publicize these updates on. You might actually find me posting more of these micro updates than I would for actual posts like these now 😅
Changelog December 10, 2018 Switched theme to VeniSwitched Homepage Settings from Static to Blog PostsSet default fontsSet featured posts for homepage sliderWanted to feature posts in a specific order, so I installed ‘Post Types Order’ plugin as recommended by the theme authorSwitched the main editor to GutenbergSet 3 featured pages on homepageAssigned featured images and cleaned up some post formatting December 12, 2018 Noticed alignment was off for the image in my last postWent to check in the editor that it was indeed center-aligned, but looking over at the frontend, clearly the formatting was not getting appliedTried adding an actual image to the post (non-gif) -> Preview -> image is not displayed in the PreviewWent on to just Publish -> image is now seen on the published post (but still not aligned properly) Therefore, decided not to move forward with Veni. While my goal was to have a site that mirrored Veni’s design, I also want it to work seamlessly with a theme compatible with Gutenberg. December 13, 2018 Switched theme from Veni to RosalieRealized sites on a BIZ plan like mine will have certain widgets removed. In this case, one of the theme’s featured elements, the IG feed which is controlled by the IG Widget.Downloaded the recommended workaround plugin ‘Instagram Feed’Mucked around for a good 20 minutes trying to get the builtin account authorization to work to no avail.Downloaded ‘Instagram Feed by 10Web’ and used that as an alternative solution for nowModified a bunch of pagesSet frontpage from static to latest posts -> modified number of posts displayed on the frontpage to 6 postsAdded and modified an ‘About’ widgetAdded MailChimp Subscriber widgetAdded and modified menu items The Revamped Site Thoughts I had a lot of fun with this little refresh project! I realize that there’s still clearly much more improvement that could be done in regards to making a theme setup more intuitive. Although, that topic could be saved for a whole different post. Basically, not everything is as easy to setup as it seems. I happened to have got it done relatively quickly because I work with these common theme issues on a daily basis. But even with that, I still found myself yelling at certain limitations I stumbled upon. After all, technology is suppose to… just work, right?
Journey Back To America: First Contact Since coming to Japan, I’ve only gone back to the US once, and that was nearly five years ago in 2013. This year will be the first time coming back since then, and I have this opportunity because my company’s Grand Meetup is taking place in America this year. Granted, the meetup is in Orlando, Florida — the opposite end of San Diego (my hometown) — I still feel at home. Leaving Sapporo Bus to the airport Lunch Connecting flight The main leg Upon Arrival Immigration Officer: You currently live in Japan, but you’re here on business? Me: That’s correct, sir. Immigration Officer: And what field of work is this in? Me: Web development. Immigration Officer: Ah, so I.T. then. *stamp, stamp, stamp* Immigration Officer: *hands me back my passport* You have a good day. Welcome home. Me: Thank you, glad to be back, sir. Hotel Hilton Orlando Buena Vista Giant GM decal right when you walk the front! Custom Automattic message in the room as well 😀 Local chocolates for the team My basecamp for the week 🙂 Mandatory Family FaceTime I’ll be in Orlando for a whole week until October 6th, spending time with the entire Automattic crew! I’ll try to make a daily post of my experience if I can. Otherwise, if not, expect a long epic one at the very end 🙂
English to Japanese Translation: My Workflow I use WordPress. I study Japanese. And then one day, such a magnificent revelation came to me when I realized I could do both these things at the same time after having seen this: Why I had not discovered this sooner is beyond me… But, as the title of this article implies, I am here to share my experience of what I have learned while translating WordPress, specifically in the Japanese locale. I’ll mainly be addressing the personal workflow I use when translating.Continue reading “English to Japanese Translation: My Workflow”
WordPress in Japanese Education One of the great things I love about being a private high school English writing composition teacher—in Japan—is the fact that once students have learned all the basics and fundamentals of the language, topics to explore in class are pretty much limitless.Continue reading “WordPress in Japanese Education”
