A blogging reboot

Hi there! I guess this is the first post on this new blog. After years of absence, I felt the desire to pick up blogging again. But since this blog will be different from what I did during my active working years, it’s brand-new.

What does this blog run on?

Some of you who have been following me for a long time might remember that a good while back, I started looking into ClassicPress for a personal blog. ClassicPress is, in essence, WordPress without the block editor. It is a fork of a recent WordPress version, stripped of all that is the block editor and related components. Moreover, there is ongoing work to minimise the footprint by reducing reliance on other, sometimes even no longer maintained, JavaScript libraries such as JQuery. Much of the logic is moved back to PHP, or where JavaScript is needed, is using vanilla JavaScript. Just the other day, the site customiser was rewritten to stop its reliance on these JS libraries. This is now in a nightly build, and on a test installation, works really well. All in all, the admin backend is really fast nowadays. It reminds me of the old WordPress days when you could quickly move through the admin using a screen reader because everything was behaving like a website should.

At the same time, polyfills are rewritten in HTML 5 with since long supported and accessible elements instead of relying on custom JS to simulate interactions for keyboard and screen readers. Moreover, a considerable number of WordPress plugins work with ClassicPress. Essentially, all plugins that don’t rely on blocks should just work. The same goes for themes that don’t rely on block functionality.

They also have a plugin for WordPress that allows to switch to ClassicPress. It gets added to your current WordPress site and runs a series of checks to make sure plugins that are currently installed still work afterwards. The plugin offers suggestions for modifications to the current install to ensure a smooth transition. Once everything checks out, the current WordPress installation is being replaced with ClassicPress. Of course, all suggestions to make backups beforehand apply.

So, this blog runs on ClassicPress. But it is no conversion from WordPress, but a fresh installation instead. And the greatest thing: Ulysses, my favourite writing tool on the Mac, works with ClassicPress, too. You just add a self-hosted WordPress and point it at your ClassicPress install. It’ll work, including an app-specific password, just like that. Lovely!

What about your old articles?

They are still available under the old domain. That collection of articles is now merely a collection of static pages that is preserved for posterity. It won’t be updated, but you can still reference articles from way back when. Since accessibility is not a fast-moving field of web development, many concepts and explanations still apply even if an article is ten years old or more.

What will you write about on this blog?

In essence, anything and everything that comes to mind. I’m retired now, and with no health perspective to return to an active working career. So anything I might write about accessibility draws from my experience, may contain quite an opinion at times, and is reflecting my views, and my views alone. I am no longer associated with any organisation or employer.

But accessibility won’t be the only topic you’ll read about on here. Recently, I picked up playing Showdown, and I’ll be definitely writing about my experience.

But one thing is certain, I won’t go into politics, or any of the other bad news stuff that plagues this world. I hope that this place will be something you, dear reader, will enjoy coming to and feel good while reading.

So, let’s embark on this new journey together, shall we?