I'm a web developer from the Isle of Man now living in Australia. I build with Wordpress and Shopify, and also trying out Eleventy.
Latest Posts
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Recently I set up a new page on this site to list the books I've read: https://alansuspect.dev/books/
There is probably more I could do with it but getting it working in the first place was my main concern.
I started using
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Among many things, I build a lot of WordPress sites for my clients. For the most part I use Elementor, ACF, and other stuff, and tend to leave the actual block post editor alone. My clients are often responsible for general post/page content.
Last week I had to do a bunch of editor work and wow - I didn't realise how unusable the block editor is:
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for the most part there is no indication where you're dragging a block to
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the toolbar popup constantly gets in the way
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just a general lack of good UX practice
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so much white space for no reason
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the up/down arrows are useful, but thet don't work cross-block, so if I have a paragraph and want to put it inside a column I can't. Press up and it goes above the column block.
There are more, these are just off the top of my head. I'm a little surprised but also not very surprised, WordPress has been changing for the worse for a long time, but it still broadly a decent CMS.
That's not to say the old TinyMCE editor was any better, but mixing content and layout is always a messy situation and I don't think either editors handle it well.
I much prefer how modern editor's approach this and use Markdown, and no interpretation of layout (columns, etc), however WordPress have heavily invested in their block editor so I can't see them changing any time soon.
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Well I did it, I've officially had an active blog for a year now.
I think it's the longest I've ever kept a blog going - and at 14 posts I'm not exactly winning any records - but sticking to things isn't my forté so I'm pretty chuffed with myself.
Looking back, I've enjoyed playing with Eleventy (more to come on that in future posts); discovering itch.io and all the amazing games on there; and also finding bitsy and making several fun games.
So here's to the next year, and seeing what else I can add to this site.