behind the (website) scenes

After putting it off again and again, I've finally sat down today and did the long-overdue update of the website again. In the end, it wasn't as bad as I had feared, but, ah, there's always something that gets toasted with a larger update... or something that quietly, with a short sizzling sound, fried itself a while before and then you do an update and discover that something is not looking like it should, or doing what it should. Plus... that it might have been in that state for a while as well!

So, long story short: The last slightly larger shop update that I did, a good while ago by now, totally fried all the template tunings that I had done when doing the migration to the newest Joomla version. That was a lot of work just made useless, and it irked me quite a bit. However, there was no time at that point to sit down and re-do all of it for the new version, so I only did a few tweaks to remedy the worst issues, tried for functionality, and then decided that ugly (or at least not looking like I had imagined) and functioning would be good enough, and is definitely better than theoretically beautiful but offline or looking nice but not working.

Today I was feeling a little brain-dead inbetween, and in that state I figured that it would be a great idea to do the site update. Because, as we all totally know, figuring out website stuff needs no brains at all, right? Yes, exactly.

Of course clicking the correct buttons in the correct order (backup first, then updates of the extensions, then update of the system) doesn't need much brain power. But afterwards, it's time to check if everything works as it should, and looks as it should, and figure out what needs to be done where in case it doesn't. Which... well. You can probably imagine that these tasks do require some of the grey matter to be online, and a neuron or two here or there able and willing to shoot an impulse somewhere...

Fortunately my little bout of frustration was remedied by a cup of coffee and some uplifting words from the Most Patient Husband of Them All (who also thinks that not-looking-perfect-but-functioning is a fine state), and then I sat down again with a bit more brain power.

And instead of trying, as I did the last time, to re-do the template more or less from scratch... this time, after the update removed my tweaks, I did some more tweaking in a similar manner, and now it's looking acceptable again, or at least I think so. Hopefully I've also managed, this time, to place stuff into the correct override folder so it will not have to be re-done next time.

And while I was at it, I've also updated the Textile Forum website (which was not that far behind, version-wise...) and finished sending out the latest Forum newsletter. Now I sort of feel on top with the technical stuff again - so tomorrow, I can get back to all the other, not-so-technical stuff!

OCT

Business As Usual: Bookkeeping.

behind the (website) scenes health

It's time, again, for me to sit down and do the bookkeeping stuff. It's not a thing that I particularly enjoy, but, alas, it has to be done. And that in regular intervals, as I have to hand in the VAT accounting every quarter. (That's actually a good thing, for me, as it means that at least every quarter, I automatically get an overview about how things are going.)

Usually the hacking in of numbers and checking them, and jotting down reference numbers on slips of paper and putting documents into the document folder of the accounting programme goes fairly smoothly, and I'm done relatively quickly. Sometimes though, some little-but-nasty error slips in, and then it's hunting down what happened and where and when and fixing it. I had one this time around, and it took me a while to get where it came from... but now everything lines up again, and looks fairly good, and I've sent off the numbers and paid my dues.

Which means that I can give you a celebratory picture of the little cat with a very silly face:

and then get back to all the rest of work waiting to be done today.

Thankfully nothing that involves heavy lifting, because I did get the booster shot with the updated vaccine (including the Omicron variants) yesterday, and though I have no other side effects, the area where the jab went does hurt some if I lift the arm overhead, or stretch it out completely. Side note: The German StiKo, the committee giving the guidelines on who should get vaccinated, still lists only a few groups and people over 60 years of age. Even though there's enough vaccine to get a lot more people immunised. So when I went to get my shot, I had to get an "advisory talk" with a doctor, who had to ask me why I wanted the booster... which you can get even when not on the StiKo list, but only after that advisory talk. Next thing she did was tell me that she personally thought it rather stupid that they'd still not made the list longer, or recommended it to everyone, since the incidence numbers are rising and people still get Long Covid, and there's enough of the vaccine for a lot more people...

Ah well. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, and nobody understands politics.

MAR

Relaunch Coming Up.

behind the (website) scenes

I think I have all the relevant bits and pieces figured out now, the templates seem to work decently, the shop tests have been successful so far, and that means it's finally time for me to tackle the relaunch of the website.

Since that means moving the blog, too, I will make life a bit easier for me by pausing the blog posts for the rest of this week. I'm planning to have the whole shebang finished on Friday, so you will hopefully get a blog post again on Monday, on a shiny new site with a shiny new layout.

The site, including the shop, will be offline during the migration proper. I'll try to keep that to as short a time as possible, of course, but it will surely take at least half a day or so.

Wish me luck!

FEB

I have bought something pretty.

behind the (website) scenes

Sometimes... sometimes it's just so, so nice to buy something pretty. Something that is not strictly necessary... but, well - pretty.

That is exactly what I did yesterday. I bought something for the new website. Something that really was not strictly necessary, not even un-strictly necessary... however, I've long been in love with the idea of it. And what better time to change something design-wise if not a website overhaul?

Otherwise, the changes will not be huge. There will some re-ordering of the main page articles, and some more articles on the main page, mostly information about spinning. The logo stays the same, and I'm also still quite happy with the shade of red I have as accent colour, and the general setup of the shop and shop software. The whole site will stay bilingual, and I'll also keep the three sections main page, blog, and shop.

The blog, however, will migrate to a new blog software, hopefully rendering all the comments more reliably, and allowing me to cross-post to Facebook as well.

But everything will be using a new, shiny, pretty font that I'm utterly and completely in love with. Bye bye, Cabin, you widely available but rather boring thing with your not so pretty @ sign and your not so brilliant kerning in the webfont version, which I had to fix with an extra plugin for the old blog software. Hello, shiny new font that is a semi-serif, because of course I could not decide whether I like a serif or a grotesque better (and they both have their pros and cons), and works well in print and on screen, and is just. so. pretty. At least if you ask me.

Here's a sneak peek of how it will look on the new blog:

Ah. I know it's a little nerdy, but I'm all delighted now.

I have a few more articles to fix up, a list of things to check and test, and then it will soon be time to take a deep breath, take the old site offline, make a gazillion of backups of everything and start the migration. I'm a bit scared, to be honest - it will mean migrating the blog plus pulling things from two different sites into a new one, in a mix of setting options and values directly in the backend, file copying, and SQL editing. The latter is the scariest bit, because a) I don't know much about SQL (read: next to nothing) and b) this is where most things can go horribly wrong and wreck the whole new clean shiny (and hopefully flawless) installation.

FEB

De-gumming Results.

behind the (website) scenes dyes and dyeing all the gory details materials silk

So, here we are - de-gumming results:

The procedure I did yesterday resulted in colour loss and definitely loss of some, but not all sericin - the silk still has a rather firm hand and is stiffer than I'd expect it to be if completely de-gummed.

You can see the narrow band of lighter silk on the gummy original silk, and the completely de-gummed and then dyed silk on the left side. Maybe I should take another small sample of the gummy silk and try to get all the gum out by boiling it within an inch of its life? See what happens then?

In other news, I've been busy in the background working on the website re-launch. As usual, it eats up all the time it can and then some, and there's other things to take care of and work on (such as the Egtved Project, for which you're also due an update), too, so it's actually feeling a little like a wonder that I have made as much progress as I have. The learning curve is also rather steep - in the past few days, I've successfully dabbled in CSS, altered php scripts (do not leave an extra . in or you will get a lovely error), edited sql tables by adding columns, written an sql update thingummy to replace values in a column (it's called Abfrage in German and I don't know the English term), and used a regular expression for a search-and-replace routine. I've also cursed the inconsistency of things when an installation went wrong and pondered the pros and cons of starting over or not. (Verdict? I'll try, and if it goes wrong, I'll go with the semi-clean install that seems to work okay for now.) At least I cannot complain about lack of challenges in all kinds of fields!

FEB

Uh oh.

work-related behind the (website) scenes

Well. Do you know that feeling when you're waiting for some replacement of a rickety thing, desperately hoping that the old one will keep up until the new thing has arrived, or is finished?

That's how it feels with this website for me right now. Somehow, there were issues logging into the blog today. Which makes me a tiny little bit, um, anxious. There's still a chunk of things to do on the new website, including the shop setup... but I sort of feel the pressure now.

So maybe today is website-trying-to-wrap-up-as-many-things-as-possible day? It would certainly be very nice to finally get to the moving over to the new site part. (I'm also aware that there needs to be testing done before that can happen. And that there is never enough testing to catch everything...)

JAN

Stuff going on here.

behind the (website) scenes

There's a lot of things going on here in the background, but none of them are spectacular. There's book-keeping to be taken care of (because of, well, tax paperwork being due and such stuff).

In addition, I'm working on the relaunch of the website. It's, well, not coming along too quickly, as these things tend to. At the moment, I am having severe struggles with CSS stuff regarding how the shop page looks... because even though I found what commands should technically fix the problem, I have not found the sweet spot yet where I can actually insert said commands.

Even though I started my internet career back in the days when it was cool to have your own website (I was Team Geocities), and you were coolest if you hand-coded your html for that in a text editor, I've not kept up. Which means that now, with the modern developments of website stuff, I'm sort of only half-literate. I can dabble around in some of the code, I can understand bits and pieces of what CSS and javascript and php codes do, but I cannot write them from zero, and if it gets more complicated, I'm lost. All this means that I can fix smaller issues and tweak things, but it's a bit hit-and-miss. Mind you, what I do know is still immensely helpful in 80% of all my use-cases, but when it comes to setting up or adjusting basic layouts like now... I'm sort of at my limits. (Any CSS wizards willing to have a look?)

In other news, as soon as my current book-keeping and other urgent stuff are off my desk, it will be the Return To The Spinning Machine - the last batch of yarn for the last piece to be woven for the Egtved project is due to be spun. And then, finally, there's also the rings on the skirt to be done... where I think I have a good method now (which may or may not be a possible method for how it was originally made), but it needs a little bit of fine-tuning and practising before it can start in earnest.

So. Lots of things, and none of them spectacular... but more than enough to keep me more than busy.

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