This website has finally received some much needed love. It's been over 2 1/2 years since this website was upgraded to Drupal 7. Other Drupal projects have kept me busy and I haven't time until recently to make some changes. I wanted to continue using Drupal as my blogging platform but needed to make it more maintainable. I still wanted to have fun trying out different modules / theming options but I'll try to keep those to a minimum so I don't find myself stuck in the same situation.

Omega8.cc Hosting

In preparation for some larger projects I wanted to give a different development process a run. So as part of the redesign I've moved this blog to Omega8.cc and try out the Aegir platform. It's definitely been a change and I'm still working out the kinks in my process. I'm learning quite a bit along the way. Omega8.cc is a great way to try out Aegir without having to manage the Aegir platform itself. The documentation is a bit scattered throughout various blog posts / articles on the Omega8.cc website but the staff has been pretty responsive to support requests.

Zen Theme

I had previously used the 7.x-2.2 version of the Corolla theme before it became an AdaptiveTheme sub-theme. I wanted to create my own simplified theme that had some responsive capabilities so I chose the widely used Zen theme. Other than learning how Zen Grids does its responsive magic, it's been a pretty easy change. Zen Grids really makes it easy to read / understand how the site will respond and it's constantly improving. Zen itself comes already setup to make the include regions responsive and I only made some very minor changes.

I love the minimalist approach (doesn't assume any design) that Zen takes and I've already started using it as a base theme for some enterprise Drupal projects.

Syntax Highlighting

I post sample code quite a bit and previously would just format it using the Courier New font. I hated that and finally installed the GeSHi Filter module. Hopefully that will make reading code quite a bit easier.  I'm also planning to utilize the Gist Input Filter with code snippets I have on Gist. Now all I'm waiting for is Dropbucket to provide a way to embed snippets.

1. // If you haven't visited Dropbucket yet
2. // I would definitely check it out.

Disqus Comments

The previous site was using Drupal core comments. Spam was a plague that I got tired of managing and I didn't want to require folks to create their own account simply to comment. So all of the previous comments have been removed and the Disqus module enabled. Hopefully more folks will be inclined to comment given the widespread use of Disqus on other sites and the included ability to login to Disqus using a variety of social sites.

What's Left?

There's still quite a bit I'd like to get to on this site. How the site responds definitely needs some work based on the content / widgets that are used. I need to dive into the Picture + Breakpoints modules a bit more.

I'm also using the core homepage (/node) and Recent Posts block which I'd like to change out. I'm sure there are some theming tweaks I'll be making along the way as well.

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