Month: July 2024

  • Changing Themes

    I think the thing that gets me the most about themes is how they’ve completely broken with the “style separate from structure” function.

    Now you have HTML files that call PHP functions, you have PHP files that have inline CSS declarations, and you have JSON files that store CSS and structure information (both) in one place.

    So, reverse engineering a single theme is an exercise in using your crystal ball, changing something, and checking to see if something breaks.

    Which doesn’t work on this site just yet, because it takes an hour to reflect changes on the live site, and trying to peek out how things will look in the theme preview doesn’t actually preview the pages, it previews what it THINKS the pages will look like.

    Swearwords are abound, readers. Very abound. My apologies as things start to change, visually, as I fight through this.

    Edit: I’ve made a few more changes on the back end that should speed up updates and visibility of new posts. I really hope this works, because these attacks are jumping around, and are now limiting themselves to countries I don’t want to block.

    Edit 2: The change appears to have stopped the hammering, at least so far. Gotta keep monitoring.

    Skåll!!!

  • I’ve aged 80 years in the last two weeks

    I’m going to avoid politics on this blog, but I really want to say that the title is 580% true.

    And while you try to hide in a cave* and work on things, like a website or one of four other projects, it just keeps reaching in and dragging you out by the foot.

    But I’ve made progress, and become bewildered.

    Progress – I’ve identified twenty five countries that have sourced login attacks to this website, and I’ve blocked the three worst, and attacks have dropped by half.

    But posting things still appears to have a delay, so I’m continuing to track and adjust my blocking settings.

    Bewildered – this theme is a block theme, and it just seems like they started making a theme and then just stopped.

    And they made it according to some strange “best practices” that aren’t really best practices, and reverse engineering and changing it is just proving to be a rabbit hole I shouldn’t dive down.

    Which means I should probably abandon it. So I’m mulling it over how to proceed, since I really don’t yet know block themes.

    Welp, back to it. Thanks for reading.

    Skåll!!!

    *A cave that you’ve wired with electricity and Internet, which technically defeats the reason you moved to a cave to get away from everything in the first place, but you have to have electricity and Internet because the things you’re working on are on the Internet and, so, yeah, you try to think around it and you can’t so you just give up and hunker down in your upgraded cave.

  • More working on the site

    So, work continues, slowly, on the website. But in making multiple tweaks a day and working on the backend, I’ve been able to notice some trends.

    I’m getting hammered with login attempts. This appears to coincide with the delays between publishing posts or updating information/pages/links.

    I’m still working on it, but having more understanding about what’s happening means I may have a better chance of resolving it.

    Please keep your eyes on the “Links” page – I’m currently going through my archives of saved bookmarks, testing them, and then putting them in. The page kinda looks like crap, but not in an unusable way.

    Making it look better is in the “this theme must go” category of work to do.

    Thanks for checking in, hope life is treating you better than the news implies you’re being treated. (I hate the news.)

    Edit: 2024 July 12 23:19 – I’ve found a way to reduce the attacks and the site does seem better. But now that I’ve typed that, I’m fully prepared for it to get bad again, and then worse.

    I’m still digging into theme files, and the slowdown in attacks means I might be able to see changes closer to real time…?

    Maybe?

    Back to it.

    Skåll!!!

  • Reworking things.

    I tried to change a few things on the site and it went poorly.  Now starting over with a fresh install and database, and rebuilding.

    I’m really not a fan of the out-of-the-box themes, so that’s pretty high on my list of things to change.
    All this to say: I’m working on it all now.

    Edit 1 – 2024 July 08 19:01 – there appears to be an issue where pages are cached, but they aren’t cached in the CMS engine, and it looks like it takes about an hour…? Maybe two? A while to update.

    So, changes are slow. But I’m working on them.

    Also: I really hate this entry box, but every time I try to re-enable classic mode, it breaks something else. So I’m forced to use the Block Editor. It makes me feel violent.

    Edit 2 – 2024 July 9 02:44 – There was something trying to log in, hammering the site with login attempts. Unfortunately, my previous ways of denying login-hammering don’t work with the current version of the engine, so I had to sign up for a service to lock out repeated login failures.

    Since I’ve enabled that, it seems, SEEMS, like the cache-clearing is faster. But I’m not 100% on that. So I’m just continuing to work on things in the back. Hopefully it clears up quickly.

    Except for the fact that this out-of-the-box theme is just bananapants. I mean, it has some good things going. It doesn’t look HORRIBLE, does it? But customizing it feels like collecting sacrifices and going to the circle and just hoping that I get the right combo of animal, incense, and chant.

    And this theme insists it’s customizable.

    I think vocab and word-meaning need to get more attention in school. Because the way people abuse this language….

    Edit 3 – 2024 July 09 05:53 – it appears that the cache lasts about three hours. I’ve made a few select changes at fifteen minute intervals and just kind watched when they pop in on a separate computer, and on a separate Internet connection.

    So I’m probably going to have to call tech support about this malarky.

    In the meantime, I’m going to continue to add links and tweak things.

    And have another rum drink. Oh, crap, we’re outta rum.

    Soooo many swearwords. So many.

    Edit 4 – 2024 July 09 16:01 – Still adding links and pages, and reviewing theme functions and methods against plugins and stuff, and then I discover this:

    I mean, where did that come from? I mean, I know what it is, but why did THAT bit of text appear there.

    Yeah, no, yeah. Apologies for the confusing road this is. I didn’t expect it to be like this.

    I hope it’s amusing, at least to you, the reader. Because I’m wailing and gnashing teeth over here, and at least one of us should get something positive out of this… experience, I should think.

    Edit 5 – 2024 July 09 17:07 – Working on the styles and CSS, and this theme just doesn’t keep things where I would think they’re kept.

    And while I’ve been digging through files and reviewing style declarations, it’s made a few small updates within 10 minutes, and then other updates aren’t yet appearing.

    You can’t see it, but I just spent a significant moment staring at the blinking cursor, blinking slowly, pushing down the swearwords.

    Skåll!!!