I have a negligible update for a favorite of my WordPress Calling Card themes. WP-Dimension was the first of several I first made a WordPress theme out of an HTML5-up template. It appeared in this dimension in February 2017.

This theme is also special as I use it dog-fooding style (which I have been told is not always a culturally appropriate metaphor but it fits me) since I use it myself at (best doman ever, thanks Tim Owens):

Cogdog is Alan Levine text with a row of social media link icons , and 5 boxes below-- About, Folio, Blog, Photography, Presenting, all superimposed on  a photo of a playful dog pulling  a rope
https://cog.dog/

I checked to see if the original template had changed (I am relieved to find the answer is no), so no updates were needed there.

In fact, the only significant change I made was enabling the theme to use Font Awesome version 6.02, which is really as simple as downloading the web versions, updating the all.min.css styles and replacing the web fonts. I thought I would need to incorporate a few more bits of scripts and shims, but they did not seem to be needed.

I also had been playing around with a plugin, Iconic Font Menus I had maintained after the originators abandoned it that creates the social media icons. The original version was for Font-Awesome version 4 and I foolishly renamed my updated version with a 5 in it. I had found, in fact the plugin could work with later versions by referencing the CSS in a CDN, but since I already have Font-Awesome wired into the theme, I could save loading an unnecessary second font loading:

The real reason I wanted to do this is that this theme is one that Reclaim Hosting offers as a one click install. I sent them a note with the link to a new version that they could maybe update in their universe of web hosting (this way changes are pushed to all Reclaim users who used the one click installer of the theme).

I got a replyleting me know they were pretty overloaded with semester start up for their clients, but I was offered the chance to DIY– take on modifying the Installatron Scripts that do this magic. I have been nosing around the copy Lauren Brumfield shared with me, but woah Nelly there’s a lot of moving parts

And this is the simple part

I made a first round of guesses but need more time to whack the code. The good thing is if I can figure out this simple one, I can update he SPLOT themes Reclaim offers and maybe even add new ones.

The other thing I did was followup on some GitHub renos I had done recently for TRU-Collector. My README for even the simple WP-Dimension theme was rather sprawling, so I yanked out the docs to a separate markdown file which then affords me a way to display them more elenantly with Docsify This:

Much prettier and navigable documentation, generated dynamically from GitHub markdown.

And maybe the best part of updating was a regular round of searching on a unique string in my theme footer to roundup like 15 new sites using the theme– the examples list is now 58 sites long. Some favorite new ones include:

AMany of these are for the idea I saw, as a person’s “calling card” but I see other uses like for products, conferences, etc. I see even students in the OpenETC picking it to write a series of blog posts.

I love seeing these different dimensions of use (cough) (pun).

The other new dimension I am adding to my GitHub pile of stuff is enabling the Discussions area that provides a more human way than Issues for visitors to ask questions, make suggestions. Give it a spin for WP-Dimension, right now it’s a lonely space.

This is hardly ground breaking innovation, but it does feel good to get these updates in, and even more, to get some good feelings that this simple theme, which looks most “unbloggy” resonates for people. And I am still able to provide these and not bang anyone’s head on the Full Site Editing plaff.

Give WP-Dimension a spin?


Featured Image:

2011/365/347 Believe in Fortune Cookies
2011/365/347 Believe in Fortune Cookies flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

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An early 90s builder of the web and blogging Alan Levine barks at CogDogBlog.com on web storytelling (#ds106 #4life), photography, bending WordPress, and serendipity in the infinite internet river. He thinks it's weird to write about himself in the third person.

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