#When the post has been in the queue so long it's still in legacy editor... | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

suzanneshannon · 5 years ago

Text

The Thirteenth Fourth

Well boy howdy. The 13th birthday of CSS-Tricks has rolled around. A proper teenager now, howabouthat? I always take the opportunity to do a bit of a state of the union address at this time, so let’s get to it!

Design

Technically, we’re still on v17 of the site design. This was the first design that I hired first-class help to do, and I’m still loving it, so I haven’t had much of an itch to do massive changes to it. Although it is quite different¹ today than it was on launch day.

For example…

The search experience is totally different, as it is powered by Jetpack’s Instant Search now.

The Almanac pages (e.g. background-blend-mode) have an additional sidebar that helps you navigate between pages

I re-did the typography using Hoefler&Co. Sentinel and Ringside. The monospace font code snippets are in Operator Mono and the logo has long-been Gotham Rounded, so it feels like one big happy family of typefaces.

Maybe next year we’ll do something different again. My list is starting to grow for some behind-the-scenes tech stuff I wanna re-jigger, and sometimes that goes hand in hand with redesign work.

Closed Forums

The forums on this site have been a mental weight on me for literally years. Earlier this year I finally turned them off. They are still there, and probably always will be (so the URLs are maintained), but nobody can post new threads or replies.

It was a painful move. Even as I did it, there was still some regular daily activity there and I’m sure it didn’t feel good to those people to have a place they have invested time in shut down. Here’s why I did it:

Nobody here, including me, checked in on the forums with any regularity. Unmoderated public forums on the internet are not acceptable to me.

The spam volume was going up. There were periods where most posts, even after the automatic spam blocking I get from Akismet, where spam that required manual removal. Even if we had a dedicated forums employee, that’s no fun, and since we didn’t, it was just a random job for me and I don’t need a time sink like that.

The forums represent a certain level of technical debt. They need to be updated. Their design needs to be functional in the context of this site. At one point I ripped out all custom styles and left it be the default theme, which was a good step toward reducing technical debt, but in the end it wasn’t enough.

I can handle some work and some technical debt, of course. But when you combine those things with the fact that the forums don’t contribute much to what I consider to be the success of the site. They don’t exactly drive page views or advertising demand. There isn’t really money to hire help specifically for the forums. But that’s a small part of it. I want this site to help people. I think we can do that best if we focus on publishing with as little divided attention as possible. I think there are places on the internet that are better for forum-like discourse.

Now that they’ve been off a number of months, I can report that the lifting of the mental weight feels very good to me and there has been little if any major negatives.

Social

Here’s another mental weight I lifted: I stopped hand-managing the Twitter account (@css). I still think it’s good that we have a Twitter account (and that we have that cool handle), but I just don’t spend any time on it directly like I used to.

In the past, I’d queue up special articles with commentary and graphics and stuff and make sure the days were full with a spread of what I thought would be interesting tweets about web design and development. That’s fine and all, but it began to feel like a job without a paycheck.

We don’t get (or seem to drive) a lot of traffic from Twitter. Google Analytics shows social media accounts for less than 1% of our traffic. Investing time in “growing” Twitter just doesn’t have enough of an upside for me. Not to mention the obvious: Twitter can be terribly toxic and mentally draining.

So now, all our posts to Twitter are automated through the Jetpack social media connection (we really use Jetpack for tons of stuff). We hit publish on the site and the article is auto-tweeted. So if you use Twitter like an RSS feed of sorts (just show me the news!), you got it.

The result? Our follower count goes up at the same rate it always did. Engagement there is the same, or higher, than it ever was. What a relief. Do ten times less work for the same benefit.

When I have the urge to share a link with commentary I use the same system we’ve always had here: I write it up as a link blog post instead. Now we’re getting even more benefit: long-term content building, which is good for the thing that we actually have on our side: SEO.

Someday we could improve things by hand-writing the auto-tweet text with a bit more joie de vivre, crediting the author more clearly, and, #stretchgoal, a custom or fancy-generated social media graphic.

Opened Up Design Possibilities

One aspect of this site that I’ve been happy with is the opportunity to do custom design on content. Here are some examples of that infrastructure.

On any given blog post, we can pick a template. Some of those templates are very specific. For example, my essay The Great Divide is a template all to itself.

In the code base, I have a PHP template and a CSS file that are entirely dedicated to that post. I think that’s a fine way to handle a post you want to give extra attention to, although the existence of those two files is a bit of technical debt.

I learned something in the creation of that particular essay: what I really need to open up the art direction/design possibility on a post is a simple, stripped-down template to start from. So that’s what we call a “Fancy Post” now, another template choice for any particular post. Fancy Posts have a hero image and a centered column for the content of the post. From there, we can use custom CSS to style things right within WordPress itself.

For example, my recent post on DX is styled as a Fancy Post with Custom CSS applied right within the block editor.

The Block Editor itself is a huge deal for us. That was one of my goals for the year, and we’ve really exceeded how far we’d get with it. I think writing and editing posts in the block editor is a million miles ahead of the old editor.

The hardest challenge was (and still is really) getting the block transforms set up for legacy content. But once you have the power to build and customize blocks, that alone opens up a ton of design possibility within posts that is too big of a pain in the butt and too heavy on technical debt otherwise.

Another door we opened for design possibilities is a classic one: using categories. A sort of freebie you get in WordPress is the ability to create templates for all sorts of things that just sort of automatically work if they are named correctly. So for example I have a file called category-2019-end-of-year-thoughts.php and that fully gives me control over making landing pages for groups of posts, like our end-of-year thoughts homepage. Not to mention our “Guide Collection” pages which are another way to programmatically build collections of pages.

That’s a lot of tools to do custom work with, and I’m really happy with that. It feels like we’ve given ourselves lots of potential with these tools, and only started taking advantage of it.

Speaking of which, another aspect of custom design we have available is the new book format…

eCommerce

We’re using WooCommerce here on the site now again. I just got done singing the praises of the Block Editor and how useful that has been… WooCommerce is in the same boat. I feel like I’m getting all this powerful functionality with very little effort, at a low cost, and with little technical debt. It makes me very happy to have this site on WordPress and using so much of suite of functionality that offers.

So for one thing, I can sell products with it, and we have products now! Lynn Fisher designed a poster for our CSS Flexbox guide and designed a poster for our CSS Grid guide, which you can now buy and ship anywhere in the world for $25 each. Look, with the Block Editor I can put a block for a poster right here in this post:

CSS Flexbox Poster

Find yourself constantly looking up the properties and values for CSS flexbox? Why not pin this beautiful poster up to the wall of your office so you can just glance over at it?

$25.00

Shop now

Another thing we’re using WooCommerce for is to sell our new book, The Greatest CSS Tricks Vol. I. If we actually made it into a proper eBook format, WooCommerce could absolutely deliver those files digitally to you, but we haven’t done that yet. We’ve take another path, which is publishing the book as chapters here on the site behind a membership paywall we’re calling MVP supporters. The book is just one of the benefits of that.

WooCommerce helps:

Build a membership system and sell memberships. Membership can lock certain pages to members-only as has programmatic hooks I can use for things like removing ads.

Sell subscriptions to those memberships, with recurring billing.

Sell one-off products

And I’m just scratching the surface of course. WooCommerce can do anything eCommerce wise.

Analytics

They are fine. Ha! That’s how much I worry about our general site analytics. I like to check in on them from time to time to make sure we’re not tanking or anything scary, but we never are (knock on wood). We’re in the vicinity of 8m page views a month, and year-over-year traffic is a bit of a dance.

Sponsors

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

That’s what I have to say to all our sponsors. We’re so damn lucky to work with a lineup of sponsors that I wholeheartedly endorse as well as literally use their products. We have different sponsors all the time, but these are the biggest and those who have been with us the longest.

Automattic: Thanks for building great software for the WordPress ecosystem. This site is made possible by a heaping helping of that software.

Netlify: Thanks for bringing the Jamstack world to life. I’m also a big fan of this way of building websites, and think that Jamstack should be the foundation for most websites. Beyond that, you’ve redefined modern developer experience.

Flywheel: Thank you for hosting this website, being a high-quality host I can trust and who has been helpful to me countless times. This is what high-quality WordPress hosting looks like.

Frontend Masters: Thank you for being an education partner that does things right and helps me have the best possible answer for people when they are searching a more structured formal education about doing web work: go try Frontend Masters.

If you’re trying to reach front-end developers with your products, that’s literally how I make a living and can help.

My Other Projects

CodePen is no spring chicken either, being over 8 years old itself. I repeat myself a lot with this particular aspect of talking about CodePen: we’ve got a ton of ideas, a ton of work to do, and we can’t wait to show you the CodePen of tomorrow. 2020 for CodePen has been a lot different than the last 2-3 years of CodePen. Some technical choices we’ve made have been starting to pay off. The team is vibing very well and absolutely tearing through work faster than I would have thought possible a few years ago, and we haven’t even unlocked some of the biggest doors yet. I know that’s vague, but we talk in more detail about stuff on CodePen Radio.

ShopTalk, as ever, is going strong. That’s 420 episodes this week, friends. Dave has me convinced that our format as it is, is good. We aren’t an instruction manual. You don’t listen to any particular episode because we’re going to teach you some specific subject that we’ve explicitly listed out. It’s more like water cooler talk between real world developers who develop totally different things in totally different situations, but agree on more than we disagree. We might evolve what ShopTalk show is over time, but this format will live on because there is value in discussion in this format.

Life

My wife Miranda and I are still in Bend, Oregon and our Daughter Ruby is two and a half. She’s taking a nap and I’m looking at the monitor as I type.

We have the virus here like everywhere else. It’s sad to think that we’re this far into it and our local hospital is pleading with people to be careful this holiday weekend because they are very near capacity and can’t take much more. Here’s hoping we can get past this painful period. Stay safe and stay cool, friends, thanks for reading.

I always feel bad when I make design changes away from an actual professional designer’s work. Is the site design better today than Kylie‘s original? Uhm probably not (sorry for wrecking it Kylie!), but sometimes I just have an itch to fiddle with things and give things a fresh look. But the biggest driver of change is the evolving needs of the site and my desire to manage things with as little technical debt as possible, and sometimes simplifying design things helps me get there.

The post The Thirteenth Fourth appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

The Thirteenth Fourth published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

0 notes

hermanwatts · 5 years ago

Text

Sensor Sweep: Conan Companion, Star Trek, Necromancers, Stanley Mullen

New Release (Amazon): By Crom! At long last the definitive history of Conan the Barbarian paperbacks that fans have clamoured for. 107 pages with detailed chapters devoted to each of the mighty Cimmerian’s publishers. Heavily illustrated with many rare images. Plus complete cover galleries of every US and UK Conan title ever issued. In full colour. An indispensable aid to Conan collectors and completists everywhere. Featuring a specially written foreword by Conan comics legend Roy Thomas!

Star Trek (Huffington Post): The LA Times recently ran a story about the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit, which contained a mind-boggling statistic: of the more than 100 offenders the unit has arrested over the last four years, “all but one” has been “a hard-core Trekkie.” Blogger Ernest Miller thought this claim was improbable. “I could go to a science fiction convention,” he explained “and be less likely to find that 99+ percent of the attendees were hard-core Trekkies.” While there may be quibbling about the exact numbers, the Toronto detectives claim that the connection is undeniable.

Review (Brain Leakage): That said, if you are looking for a great post-apocalyptic read, I want to draw your attention to the work of Jon Mollison. I read his A Moon Full of Stars recently, with the intent of dedicating a full-length ‘Pocky-clypse Now review to it soon. I do still plan on doing that. But I’m probably going to wait until after our daily news cycle looks a little less like the opening credits to the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake.

Awards (Kairos): … And enjoy a hearty laugh at the incestuous wasteland the once-prestigious Hugo Awards have become.

Predictions that the Hugo field would degenerate into a circle jerk of olpdub purse puppies beloved by editors in New York–and pretty much no one else–have been realized ahead of schedule.

Here’s a partial list of this year’s finalists.

D&D (DMR Books): The Complete Book of Necromancers by Steve Kurtz was released in the spring of 1995, and came and went fairly quickly. Luckily a friend of mine snagged one shortly after it came out. Ostensibly the book was intended for the eyes of Dungeon Masters only, but of course we were hungry to add the new spells and powers to our player characters’ repertoires. Clark Ashton Smith is mentioned by name in the majority of the chapters of Necromancers. While Smith’s absence from Appendix N is conspicuous, Kurtz more than made up for the oversight.

Fiction (Digital Bibliophilia): Any book that opens Page One with a man being skewered by the broken mast of a sailing ship in the middle of a storm has to be good right? Well, I’m happy to say Oath of Blood by Arthur Frazier lives up to its gory opening scene and delivers a fantastic little novel about the clash of the Saxons, Normans and Vikings during the 11th century (1066 to be precise). Arthur Frazier was one of many pen names used by the prolific Kenneth Bulmer.

Gaming (Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog): Charisma. It’s not just a dump stat, they say. But look, if you don’t have a lot of it, you’re going to be stuck in a career as an assassin. Which is kind of funny, actually. Of course if you were going to actually use that stat in an AD&D game, you’re going to have to flip to the middle of the combat section to find the reaction table. Why is it there right in the middle of sections detailing initiative and missile discharge? Evidently this something pretty important to consider when the players have initiative in a random encounter, right?

Fiction (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Another writer who has left a huge legacy with little recognition is Gardner Francis Cooper Fox (1911-1986). Fox began his career writing for Batman as early as 1939. (It was Fox who gave Bruce Wayne his “utility belt”.) During his decades long career with DC, he would work on such characters as The Flash, Hawkman and The Justice Society of America. He was there when Julius Schwartz revamped DC comics to meet the new “Comics Code”. He was there when DC invented its Multiverse. Outside of DC, he would pen the first Sword & Sorcery comic called “Crom the Barbarian”.

Fiction (DMR Books): The book being advertised was Kinsmen of the Dragon by Stanley Mullen. I was completely unfamiliar with both the title and the author. A bit of research revealed that this book had never been reprinted since its publication in 1951, which explains why it’s so little-known today. In spite of (or perhaps because of) its obscurity, good condition copies are pricey, usually going for over $50, and signed copies are much more.

Fiction/Gaming Tie-in (Karavansara): Two nights in Arkham: Lovecraft purists often frown at Lovecraft-inspired fiction. The main charge raised by these people is, other writers are either too much like Lovecraft or not at all like him, often at the same time. The second most common accusation is that certain stories are too action-centered and adventure-oriented, filled with guns blazing and chanting cultists. They usually blame Lovecraft’s popularity with the gaming crowd as the main reason for these degenerate pastiches, in which Indiana Jones or Doc Savage seem to exert an influence stronger than Nyarlathotep’s.

Fiction (Mostly Old Books): he Fargo series tell the tales of early 20th Century adventurer and solider of fortune Neal Fargo. They aren’t Westerns as the covers suggest. In this installment Fargo is hired by a rich old blowhard to rescue some Mayan treasures and the excavation team, which includes his son, from the jungles of Central America.

Cinema (The Silver Key): 1917 had been in my “to watch” queue for a long time (aka, floating around in the back of my mind), and last night I watched it with my older daughter, a self-described “film buff” who wanted to see what the hype was all about. Two word review: Excellent film. It’s an intensely personal/soldier’s journey type of story, and also manages to convey the larger tragedy of the Great War.

Fiction (Sacnoth’s Scriptorium): The Inklings and the Mythos (Dale Nelson). So, I’ve now recovered the missing issue of MALLORN* containing Dale Nelson’s wide-ranging inquiry into possible connections between the Inklings and Lovecraft’s circle, “The Lovecraft Circle and the Inklings: The ‘Mythopoeic Gift’ of H. P. Lovecraft” (MALLORN 59, Winter 2018, pages 18-32). It’s a substantial piece, and in it Nelson raises such topics as the following: Did the two groups read or were they influenced by each other?

Fiction (Scott Oden): In the past few weeks, my sophomore novel, MEMNON (Medallion Press, 2006; Crossroad Press, 2018), has received a raft of four-and-five star ratings on Goodreads and a pair of excellent reviews — which, for a fourteen-year old novel is no mean feat. Author Matt Larkin, in his review at Amazon, writes: “Evocative prose paints a living picture of the Classical world while the sudden, brutal violence serves to remind us never to look at history through rose-colored glasses.” While Scott Marlowe of Out of this World Reviews praises many things, including the battles: “I can only describe [them] as spectacular and right up there with some of the best battles I’ve had the pleasure to read in historical fiction (think Bernard Cornwell, surely one of the best of them all). Memnon gives Alexander such grief I imagine Alexander remembered their contests right up until his dying days.”

Fiction (Tentaculii): Lovecraft’s famous survey of supernatural literature was published in The Recluse in August 1927. Later in the same year Eino Railo published the history of the literary gothic in The Haunted Castle: A Study of the Elements of English Romanticism. A December 1927 review in the New York Evening Post suggests Railo’s book was published in time for the Christmas market and the January book-token crowd, and thus it appeared several months after Lovecraft’s circle had finished digesting his Supernatural Literature. Lovecraft refers to The Haunted Castle, a translation from the Finnish, in admiring terms in a later letter to Barlow and terms it a study of “the weird”.

History (Men of the West): Suddenly the war became fun. It became exciting, carnivalesque, tremendous. It became victorious and even safe. We awoke on the morning of Sunday, the 30th of July, with the feeling that the war was won — in spirit, if not in fact. Patton and the Third Army were away. At the 8th Corps, which held the western sector of the Normandy front, the G2 colonel said: “We’ve lost contact with the enemy.”

Fiction (Tentaculii): The second half of a forthcoming book, No Ghosts Need Apply: Gothic influences in criminal science, the detective and Doyle’s Holmesian Canon (October 2020), attempts to make the case that there are gothic traces in what are often assumed to be the ‘rationalist’ Sherlock Holmes stories. Sifting the extensive blurb for the book, one can eventually determine that the author suggests the following specific points… * intrigue and secret societies. . .

Fiction (M Porcius Blog): Let’s check out four stories by Mickey Spillane’s all-time favorite author, Fredric Brown, that first appeared in beautiful pulp magazines in 1942 and 1943, magazines that you can read at the universally beloved internet archive for free. “Etaoin Shrdlu” made its debut in Unknown Worlds in 1942. The cover of Unknown may be boring, but the interior illustrations are quite fine, those by Frank Kramer for L. Sprague de Camp’s “The Undesired Princess” in particular.

Sensor Sweep: Conan Companion, Star Trek, Necromancers, Stanley Mullen published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

0 notes

actutrends · 6 years ago

Text

GamesBeat managing editor Jason Wilson’s favorite games of 2019

Each year, it gets harder to nail down my favorite games of the past season. Part of this is because there are just so many studios putting out fantastic games. The rise of live-service games plays a role here, too — each year, the living games I enjoy seem to get better and take up more of my life. I can’t think of a better time to enjoy games, and as my compatriots at GamesBeat have shown, this year has had such an amazing amount of quality — be it on PC (my favorite platform), consoles like the PlayStation 4 or Nintendo Switch (portable mode is a godsend for role-playing games), or my phone. Here’re my favorite games of 2019. Note: These aren’t the games I consider to be “the best.” The most important factor is how much I enjoy playing them (and, increasingly, how much my kids enjoy watching me play them). The Outer Worlds

The Outer Worlds can be gorgeous.

Obsidian Entertainment is one of my favorite studios. It’s made three of my most-played RPGs of the past 15 years — Neverwinter Nights 2 (and its expansions), and the two Pillars of Eternity games. The Outer Worlds is different than these. You’re running around a system of planets that are at the mercy of a group of greedy, power-hungry corporations. It’s a capitalist dystopia, but it’s a funny one. And it skewers a world in which plutocrats, not people, run things. It also comes with a good character-building system, and its loading screens show off fantastic pieces of art (some of which only shows up based on your decisions). It wears its Fallout influence on its power armor (its makers include some of that landmark RPG’s creators). The Outer Worlds will also leave an important legacy for Obsidian: a fantastic finish to its run as an independent game studio. Pokémon Shield

Dynamax Pokémon loom over the battlefield.

Image Credit: GamesBeat

Years ago, I wrote about how much I hated Pokémon when I tried Red, the then-new release for the Nintendo 3DS. But last year, Let’s Go: Pikachu captured my heart. I credit part of this to my children, who love the TV series and the cards. Yet the game has plenty to recommend it. It’s cheery, and the way so many of its characters are supportive of you and each other is touching in an age where so many people seek to just tear everyone and everything down. It’s also fun to find all these new Pokémon, use the Dynamaxx power to turn them into giant monsters, watch them evolve, and explore the world. My favorite part, though, had little to do with the gameplay. Every time we encountered a new Pokémon, my kids would look it up in their books, helping me find its vulnerabilities and plotting how I should set up my team. Pokémon’s better when we’re playing like this, together. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

There are fouler things than Imperial Stormtroopers in the deep places of the world.

Image Credit: Respawn

Respawn created new worlds and characters in Jedi: Fallen Order. It nailed how I’ve long thought a Jedi should feel in a game. Using your Jedi powers and lightsabers to smash through legions of stormtroopers just feels right. Mixing in metroidvania-like levels gives players plenty of places to explore, and I enjoyed going back to different worlds in key moments of the story (like your second time on Kashyyyk). But most important, it creates a compelling, sympathetic character in the Second Sister, showing that a servant of the Sith can be more than an evil person with a lightsaber. My only quibble: I wish Respawn’s easier modes made it, well, easier to deal with some of the challenging platforming sections, not just nerfing combat. Mistover This is a fantastic spin on Darkest Dungeon and Etrian Odyssey from Krafton, a small team inside the larger Krafton Game Union group. You start in a town, recruit a party, get quests, and outfit your crew. This is where it feels like Etrian Odyssey. But in town, you open up different buildings as you accomplish quests, the first of its many Darkest Dungeon influences. Food and light play a role in the exploration as well. Once you’re in a dungeon, moving around becomes more like a traditional roguelike. For every move you make, the monsters move as well. Combat is strategic as well, as your formations and the abilities you choose matter on the battlefield. It’s a fantastic take on roguelikes, and it’s worth playing. Grindstone

Grindstone is a clever puzzler in which you slay monsters by drawing lines for your buffed-up brawler.

Image Credit: Capy Games

Capy’ Games Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes and Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery are two of my all-time favorite mobile games. So when Grindstone hit Apple Arcade earlier this year, I had to check it out. And when it debuted, I spent about 2 hours playing it. It reminds me of Clash of Heroes in how you line up enemies to slay. It’s a puzzler. You draw a line from your warrior through groups of baddies. It’s simple enough that young children can understand it, but it gets complex enough that it becomes a real challenge to accomplish every map’s goal. It’s fantastic, and I think it’s the best game on Apple Arcade. Magic: The Gathering — Arena

The Brawl decks I’ve settled on during the final day of the event.

Image Credit: GamesBeat

Two years ago, I had no idea I’d love Magic. Now, I play it almost every day thanks to Arena. It’s a fantastic adaptation of the granddaddy of all collectible card games. I’ve learned to play every color, and I’ve even had success beating tuned netdecks with creations of my own. I’ve become a better-than-average draft player as well, and when publisher Wizards of the Coast introduced Brawl, I not only found myself making decks in Arena but with my growing cardboard-card collection as well. Earlier this year, Arena left its open-beta status. The game still has some problems. Most days, you’ll find someone on Reddit complaining about performance issues. Wizards’ monetization tactics are annoying — more than once now, it has introduced an idea (such as the 2-to-1 wild card crafting cost for Historic cards), then changed it after outcry from players. Right now, it’s charging 10,000 in-game gold for a month-long Brawl event, and while you do get one special card as a reward, it’s pretty much charging you to play what I and others consider to be Arena’s best format. That sucks, as Brawl should be a format we can play in a queue, not just in a friendly challenge, at any time. But despite these issues, Arena has proven to be the best way to play Magic when you can’t shuffle cards with your friends. And that’s pretty awesome. Hearthstone

There be dragons!

Image Credit: Blizzard

Year 5 of Blizzard Entertainment’s free-to-play collectible card game might be its best yet. Hearthstone’s development team has been more active this year than ever before, introducing a flurry of prompt card changes to fix problems, better in-game events, its first new mode in years (Battlegrounds, which is pretty dang good), and a willingness to try new things (like the recent Wild event or Arena rotations). It’s even telling better stories with its expansions. Like Magic, Blizzard has stumbled some this year. During its Wild event, it didn’t do anything to address the power of Evolve Shaman, which drove many players (like me) away from Standard and into other modes like Battlegrounds … or spending more time with other games. And its handling of the Hong Kong situation was clumsier than a newborn calf trying to stand up for the first time. But even with those problems, Hearthstone feels more vibrant now than any time since its first expansion. And that’s a good thing for Blizzard and its millions of players worldwide. Dragon Quest Builders 2

Even the quest lines have punny names in Dragon Quest Builders 2.

Image Credit: GamesBeat

I’ve never been able to get into Minecraft. I know it’s fabulous. My kids love it. But I like a little more direction, and I get this from Square Enix’s Dragon Quest Builders series. In the sequel, you’re building your way to defeating a great evil. It’s charming, and as you finish off quests, you open up more building materials and options. It has most of the fun of a Dragon Quest game, but with a sandbox openness. It’s neat, and it’s even more fun when you play with kids. Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium is like no other RPG that came out this year … or in any recent year.

Image Credit: ZA/UM

This might be the trippiest RPG I’ve ever played, and I dig it. You play a detective coming off a bender, trying to solve the mystery of a hanged man left on a tree. It doesn’t have combat, really. You face decisions in conversations you have with the characters around you (and in your head). The system revolves on skill checks in conversations and reactions to the words you and others use, not weapons, warriors, or wizards. It’s fascinating, and it developer ZA/UM delivers something I’ve rarely seen in my decades of gaming: an RPG where choice, not combat, matters the most. A Plague’s Tale: Innocence

A Plague’s Tale: Innocence is a fascinating game.

Image Credit: Asobo Studio

I’ve been fascinated with this game since seeing it at E3 in 2017. It’s from Asobo Studio in France, and it’s about a 15-year-old girl and her younger brother surviving during a horrible plague afflicting France. And rats. Swarms of rats. Millions and millions of rats. The pair must use stealth to escape an inquisition that’s after them �� and may be at the center of the plague. It’s a terrific, terrifying story, and it has the bonus of capturing the repulsiveness rats and magnifying it into a game that both fascinates and disgusts. It’s unique. Honorable mentions Code Vein Etrian Odyssey: Nexus Iratus: Lord of the Dead Metro: Exodus MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries Path of Exile Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror Slay the Spire The Surge 2

The post GamesBeat managing editor Jason Wilson’s favorite games of 2019 appeared first on Actu Trends.

0 notes

theway-to-myheart · 8 years ago

Text

Keeping Up With Content Creation: A Dad’s Workflow

We love collaborating with bloggers and today we’re pleased to be able to share this guest post with you from Ivan Siladji. Ivan’s a dad and a blogger and he’s sharing his tips for keeping up with content creation. Enjoy!

Let’s be real for just a minute. For most of us, this whole blogging thing is a part time gig. Some people never want to take their writing full-time, you know, the making a living from it kind of full time. For many, blogging is a way to journal their life – and it’s a great way of doing that. Kudos.

For others, myself taken, the blogging journey we are all on is one that will one day provide for financially, and then some.

The bridge between hobby content creation, being part time and then ultimately full time is a long journey that best be enjoyed with long nights, sore typing thumbs and a glass of wine. It all gets interesting when you couple all of this with a full-time job, being a dad to two kids under six, married life, family life, taking time for health and all the other things this wonderful thing called life may throw at you.

Content Creation – Why Create?

Legacy. That’s it for me. For you that might be different, and probably will. My mission is to interact with as many people as I can while I’m here and in some way, shape or form, leave a lasting impact, big or small, trivial or profound. Content creation and the internet is the easiest and most direct way of doing that. It’s also the most competitive. And if I can support my lifestyle while doing all of this it just seems like a no-brainer. Of course, there is always a catch. I’ll give you a hint – it starts with “W”.

So Where Do You Fit In?

My perspective starts with me standing all alone, on that bridge, this little guy from the big city of Sydney, Australia — long way from home, I know. I’m currently walking that line between hobby content creator and part time blogger. Sure, I hope to take this thing full time but the biggest thing I’ve learned in the last four years would have to be patience.

I currently create content around three main pillars – written in the form of my blog or other articles, such as this that you’re reading now. Second is video content and that’s where my YouTube channel comes in. There I document my journey and life in the form of vlogging and create other short form videos for my community. Then there is the third pillar – the audio component. Think of podcasting for example. In my case, this is my anchor station where I aim to put out daily “plogging” content – think of vlogging or blogging but in podcast form. Then there is the plethora of micro content that strings all of this together – Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. All of which in their own right are quickly becoming, if not already, pillar content platforms.

I took the route of these three main pillars because they integrate well. I can write a piece of content in blog form and then speak about it in audio form, opening up further conversation and bringing to life the voice behind the written post, and vice versa. YouTube vlogging allows me to take my community along for the journey and pull together a video that visually tells the story I am trying to convey in otherwise written form. And in all honestly, humans are very visual creatures. Personally, I’m always painting the picture in my mind of what a writer looks like behind a post – video is perfect to share what that looks like with your own community, especially if you’re comfortable to do that sort of thing.

How Do You Keep Up?

Before you think about how you are going to go about all of this it’s important to accept the fact that it will involve a great deal of work, which, if you’re passionate about all of this content creation stuff, shouldn’t be a problem, most of the time. If you don’t have kids you’re ahead of the game for time as evening, night and early morning hours are still your own. If kids have somehow made their way into your lives you’re in for a journey of time management. Don’t worry, it can be done, you just have to manage a few extra things.

Now that you’ve accepted the fact that work will be involved, it’s important that you get clear about what it is you are trying to do. Get clear about the pillar content forms you want to pursue. Don’t focus so much on the social platform or you will be hedging your content on the success of the platform and any algorithms they throw your way. Rather, focus on the content types. For instance, when I say I vlog for YouTube I also have these vlogs as video posts on my public Facebook page – Facebook is really upping their attention on video content so engagement for that type of content is usually higher and Facebook gives it some preference in their feeds.

From here it’s all about when. This is where the ‘keeping up’ part comes into play. I’ll make it easy for you from the get-go. You won’t always keep up. Accept that. As you make progress and get better at your craft you inherently get busier. Opportunities come more often which means you’re writing more frequently than you otherwise anticipated and with that comes an increase in your content distribution efforts. You spend more time engaging with your readers, viewers and/or listeners and building a community — personally, that’s the best part and it’s a lot of fun.

Tools Of The Trade

Like any job, you need specific tools to get you through specific tasks. Personally, I use a number of tools to make the process of content creation all that bit easier. These include (and are free without taking any upgrade options);

Evernote – I use Evernote to create written content for platforms outside of my own blog, for example, contributor pieces. If I’m writing directly for my own blog I write directly within WordPress, my sites hosting platform. The text editor there is more than ample for how I like to write so I keep within that. However, when it comes to writing for someone else, jotting down notes or getting an audio note in, especially while out-and-about, I don’t go past Evernote.

Pages – I manage my facebook page through the native pages app by Facebook. It gives better reporting and power over your page. I’ve used this for years so I’m not sure if it’s normal practice now but if it’s not and you’re still managing your page within Facebook itself, try the pages app.

Canva – I’ve recently signed up with Canva (oh Canva, where have tho’ been). In a nutshell, Canva makes creating anything visual so much easier. They have all the templates you need for all the major platforms. I use this via google chrome as an in browser app as well as on my iPhone when not at my desktop.

Asana – Need a task and project management tool? Asana is your new best friend. This cloud based app on desktop and mobile is powerful, visually appealing and makes setting up tasks and projects much easier. After you play around with this app and get your bearings around it you’ll never look back. You can organise your tasks by project and assign sub-tasks. And if you have a team it gets even better as you can assign tasks to your team and open workflows between members.

Bit.ly – Bit.ly is my go-to link shortening app. I like this as it allows me to track click throughs from social platforms and other parts of the interweb so I know in more detail who is getting exposed to my content and from where.

WordPress – I natively create most of my blog content within the mobile version of WordPress. Because most content today is consumed within a mobile device I figured it made sense to create the content within one. This allows me to see what my posts will look like on mobile which gives me a chance to iron out most blogging layout bugs before I hit publish.

iPhone / DSLR / External Microphone / Tripod – I’m an Apple guy but if you’re an Android user all of what I’ve written here will still work. I record 95% of my video content on my iPhone and subsequently do 80% of my video editing within the device as well. Sometimes I go to desktop but it’s usually much easier and quicker to do it right from my device. Point is – you don’t need to get fancy. Although I use Adobe software for higher end video and photography work, apple iMovie is more than capable of getting you started. I also carry in my kit a DSLR (although I’m using it much less these days), an external microphone for audio content such as that which I put out on Anchor when I’m in the office as well as a tripod to hold my iPhone or DSLR when shooting video. Take home message is you can do most of your content creation using nothing else than your smartphone and any excuse otherwise is exactly that – an excuse.

I’m Still Hearing You In The Background…

I’m well aware some of you are still saying – good for you but I just don’t have the time. Respect. I get it. But I don’t buy it from most of you. I truly would love to see you win at this. Even before I do. The journey is long, so engage in a little patience, sprinkle on some consistency (the hardest part) and take small steps to climb big mountains. Utilise tivo to record your favourite show for later or skip it all together. If you’re naturally a night person – go to bed an hour or two later. Morning person? Wake up an hour or two earlier. Catching a train? Write a post. Waiting in queue for a latte? Engage on Twitter. Taking an Uber? Record a podcast. Out and about? Record a vlog. It just comes down to work.

Given this post threw a lot at you, I truly hope it’s given you a little more edge. I love creating content, particularly that in written form. Being part of an online community has introduced me to more people than I ever thought I’d get to know and it’s been a hell-of-a journey. Be open to patience, and be willing to travel the blogging journey long term – results come not over night but rather after many keystrokes. Most of all – enjoy the journey. I am.

About Ivan

Sydney, Australia. That’s where I’m from. It’s a big place. Me – I’m a little smaller. I’m a normal dad, of two wonderful children, a boy and a girl. I’m married to one amazingly attractive woman who’s patience for being swamped by my intensity is admirable.

I blog. It is a means for me to let out my creative juices all the while working in a crazy job and raising a family. It’s a place to share my opinions, albeit sometimes controversial, share lessons I have learned that might be of use and hopefully bring some joy to someone’s life. Some of the experiences I draw lessons from are my work as a scientist and manager of people, parenting, business, lessons from blogging, family and of course a general interest in things like the outdoors, lifestyle and self-awareness.

For me, the best part of writing is connecting with you, the reader, and each time I do I’m forever grateful for the new friendships that are formed.

If you like this post I’d love to connect with you more. You can reach me by email, visit my blog or catch me on Facebook most days of the week.

The post Keeping Up With Content Creation: A Dad’s Workflow appeared first on NC Blogger Network.

from Local Biz North Carolina http://ift.tt/2viU7on

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2hKqac6 via NC Top businesses

#Keeping Up With Content Creation: A Dad’s Workflow #WordPress

0 notes

julesliedtke · 8 years ago

Text

Keeping Up With Content Creation: A Dad’s Workflow

For others, myself taken, the blogging journey we are all on is one that will one day provide for financially, and then some.

Content Creation – Why Create?

So Where Do You Fit In?

How Do You Keep Up?

Tools Of The Trade

I’m Still Hearing You In The Background…

About Ivan

For me, the best part of writing is connecting with you, the reader, and each time I do I’m forever grateful for the new friendships that are formed.

If you like this post I’d love to connect with you more. You can reach me by email, visit my blog or catch me on Facebook most days of the week.

The post Keeping Up With Content Creation: A Dad’s Workflow appeared first on NC Blogger Network.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2viU7on

#Uncategorized #Keeping Up With Content Creation: A Dad’s Workflow

0 notes

suzanneshannon · 5 years ago

Text

The Thirteenth Fourth

Design

For example…

The search experience is totally different, as it is powered by Jetpack’s Instant Search now.

The Almanac pages (e.g. background-blend-mode) have an additional sidebar that helps you navigate between pages

Maybe next year we’ll do something different again. My list is starting to grow for some behind-the-scenes tech stuff I wanna re-jigger, and sometimes that goes hand in hand with redesign work.

Closed Forums

Nobody here, including me, checked in on the forums with any regularity. Unmoderated public forums on the internet are not acceptable to me.

Now that they’ve been off a number of months, I can report that the lifting of the mental weight feels very good to me and there is been little if any major negatives.

Social

The result? Our follower count goes up at the same rate it always did. Engagement there is the same, or higher, than it ever was. What a relief. Do ten times less work for the same benefit.

Opened Up Design Possibilities

One aspect of this site that I’ve been happy with is the opportunity to do custom design on content. Here are some examples of that infrastructure.

On any given blog post, we can pick a template. Some of those templates are very specific. For example, my essay The Great Divide is a template all to itself.

For example, my recent post on DX is styled as a Fancy Post with Custom CSS applied right within the block editor.

Another door we opened for design possibilities is a classic one: using categories. A sort of freebie you get in WordPress is the ability to create templates for all sorts of things that just sort of automatically work if they are named correctly. So for example I have a filed called category-2019-end-of-year-thoughts.php and that fully gives me control over making landing pages for groups of posts, like our end-of-year thoughts homepage. Not to mention our “Guide Collection” pages which are another way to programmatically build collections of pages.

That’s a lot of tools to do custom work with, and I’m really happy with that. It feels like we’ve given ourselves lots of potential with these tools, and only started taking advantage of it.

Speaking of which, another aspect of custom design we have available is the new book format…

eCommerce

We’re using WooCommerce here on the site now again. I just got done singing the praises of the Block Editor and how useful that is been… WooCommerce is in the same boat. I feel like I’m getting all this powerful functionality with very little effort, at a low cost, and with little technical debt. It makes me very happy to have this site on WordPress and using so much of suite of functionality that offers.

CSS Flexbox Poster

Find yourself constantly looking up the properties and values for CSS flexbox? Why not pin this beautiful poster up to the wall of your office so you can just glance over at it?

$25.00

Shop now

WooCommerce helps:

Build a membership system and sell memberships. Membership can lock certain pages to members-only as has programmatic hooks I can use for things like removing ads.

Sell subscriptions to those memberships, with recurring billing.

Sell one-off products

And I’m just scratching the surface of course. WooCommerce can do anything eCommerce wise.

Analytics