Enhancements to This Blog

Written 50-B20 [2018-09-06], Edited 54-F27 [2023-01-03]

Introduction

When this blog began, it was pretty much for my own amusement. I picked technologies specifically because they seemed fun to play with. Features were limited based on how easy I thought they would be to implement myself. The layout was optimized not for reading experience, but for showing off SVG resizing and CSS transparency. I started writing prose, but switched to listicles and even bullet points simply because it was easy.

Was this all good? Bad? I had no idea. My own opinion reversed itself every few days. As for other people, their feedback was limited to direct messages and a log file that nobody read.

All the while, the wider internet was changing. So over the past few weeks, I decided to enhance this site on several fronts.

Server-Side Changes You Hopefully Will Not Notice

The first change was an overhaul of the content management system. The incumbent was a system I wrote myself in Golang: blom. Golang is a fun little language for certain tasks, but its unique strengths did not shine through in blom.

I pretty much rewrote blom such that each task was conducted using the most suitable language: file management was handled in bash scripts, templating was handled using m4 and various other tools were used as appropriate. This is obviously not something a reader would notice directly, but it made adding new features and testing new layouts significantly easier.

Another enabling change was switching from a simple NodeJS-based server to nginx. In retrospect this was not necessary, but it made some of the next changes easier to configure.

In the past, every time a file on this site was accessed, a line would be added to a log file which I never, ever checked. However, now I’ve installed a web log analyzer which presents all the data with pretty colors. I used to feel like I was shouting into the void, but now when I write I can be assured that plenty of search engine bots are reading.

HTTPS

Even before this blog existed, the world has been moving to using HTTPS by default for all websites. ratan.blog has been very late to the party … still, better late than never!

Comments

I added a comment system! That merits its own article.

Styling

Here is what the blog used to look like.

I actually attempted disable all the browser’s default styling and individually write new styles for every possible HTML element. This was both exhausting and probably a waste of time, but reading the MDN list of HTML elements was very educational. For one thing, I finally know what a description list is (also called a definition list). As for the CSS reset, I ended up just using the budget version:

* {
margin:0;
padding:0;
}

After eliminating the Lufthansa-esque color scheme, the next casualty was the logo.

Image credit: Ratan Abraham Varghese

What was the point of that logo? Was it totally arbitrary? Well, I don’t actually remember. All I know is, the filename was calculated_asymmetry.svg, but the logo was symmetrical using an axis 45° from the horizontal. What a scandal!

Image credit: Ratan Abraham Varghese

The meaning of the new logo is that right-angled trapezoids are underrated.

Short URLs

So you know that feeling when some task seems so easy that there would be no reason to test it, but then something goes wrong that could have been easily detected while testing? Yeah, that’s what happened after I registered r3n.me. I tried to make a script that created alternate URLs for every existing article. Unfortunately it created alternate URLs for those alternate URLs every time it was run. Eventually there were 3 or 4 paths to every article and each path had a corresponding entry in the RSS, Atom and JSON Feeds.

If you were subscribed to any of those feeds and saw “re-runs” of old articles, sorry about that.

On the plus side, there are short URLs for every article. They are recorded in the archive.

Content

The third item will shock you!

Description lists

I edited a previous article to use a description list, because description lists are cool and underrated (much like right-angled trapezoids).

Listicles

I haven’t removed the old listicles, but will probably not write more.

More Frequent Updates

Just kidding.