These are updates for July & August. I’ve been lagging a bit on rolling out updates because I am actually working on turning my website static. I’ve been making A LOT of changes in my life this year, and these changes have inspired me to reflect on my website a bit and the direction I want for it in the future. WordPress has a lot of features I like – it is flexible, dynamic, I can pretty much do what I want on it. But what I’m realizing I don’t like, is how reliant I am on so many plugins for functionality. A lot of my website functionality is dependent on these plugin developers to keep up with WordPress updates. Not that I think they’re going to stop rolling out updates anytime soon, but I just want to be independent of all that and not have to rely on so many external factors in order for my website to be functional. Plus, where my site got hacked earlier this year and I lost so much, it really made me realize that WordPress has weak points and vulnerabilities, and I don’t want to face another instance in the future where I lose everything I worked so hard to create.
So I want to turn my website static and just build everything from scratch. This will be a lot of work, but I think in the long term it is something I will feel a lot happier with, even if it means sacrificing some functionality. Anyways, below are the updates for July/August and this will probably be my last set of updates for my WordPress site before I make my site static. So if you don’t see anything from me here for awhile, that’s why. I’m still working on my site, just more behind the scenes until I have enough of it built to publish.
Added the Sovereign Web page
Last month I got both webrings up and functional again, and now I’ve finally gotten around to making the Sovereign Web’s main page again. It looks quite a bit different from the way I previously had it. I’m not sure if I’m going to incorporate Candace again or not. I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve stopped using AI for image generation. If I do add her back, I’ll probably stick with the Maplestory format I used for the Library.
Added a Friends section in Town
Added my mutual friends to the right side panel, and added a friend request form.
Updated webrings & directories
One of the biggest bummers getting hacked is I ended up losing a lot of members with having to change the webring script again. I’ve sent out an email notice to everyone about widget updates but I think a lot of people aren’t active with their sites right now and will have to reapply down the road.
I’ve also finally gotten around to adding everyone to their corresponding directory! I still have to make maplestory characters for each one. I’ll get around to it eventually.
Updating Website Structure
Currently in the process of trying to minimize my third-party plugins for both the privacy and security of my website. I sadly have to redo a lot of my pages, but I think in the long run it will be better. I’m trying to be a lot more conscious of the programs I use and things I support lately, and I want my site to go in a direction I feel good about. That includes taking out the bloat where possible, and discontinuing my support to companies and corporations that don’t respect privacy and their users. The landing page is what I’ve managed to get finished up this month. Will eventually get around to the other pages. It’s still a WIP.
Purged 99% of the AI art on my site
There are maybe 1-2 images remaining, but I’ve deleted everything else. I have some ideas of things I want to create, though I haven’t fully committed to any ideas yet. But one of these days I’ll do a longer post about why I’ve drastically reduced my AI usage these past few months and deleted my chatGPT account. I’ll eventually do an in depth post on why I’ve had a change of heart on AI. I’m still not against productively and creatively. But I’m not okay with what I’ve learned about the data centers.
Fixed my webring forms
When I made the Book Ring member submission form, I made it in such a way that when people submit a request to join, it automatically makes a post in ‘pending review’ status with all the submitted information. It just takes some of the tediousness out of manually adding people this way. Anyways, I duplicated this form for the Free Speech Webring and Sovereign Web Ring, expecting it to do the same, but for some reason they didn’t create any posts, only sent me an email notification. I’ve been racking my brain for the past month trying to figure out why, and I finally discovered there were a couple of invalid fields that were causing the issue. Finally resolved.
Added redirects from my old subdomains
This is to hopefully help resolve a lot of broken links from people linking back to me on their sites.
Got my Cottage page back up
It pretty much looks the same as before, for the most part, which I’m fine with. I was happy with the old version, and I worked REALLY hard on all of those changing backgrounds. FYI, none of those images are AI generated. I made those. There is a different image for every day of the week, for morning/noon/evening, and for every season and they automatically change depending on the time of day. I’m hecking proud of my old cottage page, so I wanted to revive it the best I could. I still have a lot of pages that were in the cottage portion of my site that I need to remake. Most likely, all of those pages will not be the same as they were before and will be rebuilt from scratch.