guychapman.net Web Site Update

I have just released an updated version of this guychapman.net web site that moves all the content to run on a WordPress installation. When the site was first created in 2006 it was all built as simple, hand-crafted html pages. This meant it was lean and loaded fast but took more effort to maintain. I optimised that to a degree by splitting the pages up into re-usable parts that were generated from individual php includes – there is a kind of pleasure in this for IT nerds but after a while the effort is not sustainable.

Eventually I started to use Movable Type to run just the pages that were under the blog section but after several years MT became commercial only so I migrated that blog section over to Drupal. Drupal was great for a while too but it was ultimately a way more heavy-weight tool than I needed for the limited scope of this site.

This upgrade to moves the blog, now named Journal, along with all the static pages into the new WordPress installation. I have mixed feelings about this – it makes life so much more simple for creating and maintaining content and to size image files but gone are the days of creating the leanest possible html page… I just have to let go of that and concentrate on getting the site ready for the next round of art works that I am working on. Way better to be putting the energy into that hey?

In this upgrade, all the art works, in fact almost all content, is a Journal entry like this one. Each entry is categorised and tagged and those attributes can be used to create the specific menus, Works, Painting or Drawing for example. As each journal entry has a publishing date and time, I have used that, in many cases, for the actual date of the work being produced or for the date and time of an exhibition opening. I like this, as it puts the works and events into a chronological order on the site that matches when they were created in reality. The quirk with this though, is many items pre-date the launch of the site in 2006 so there are journal entries that look like they were published before the site existed… but I’m okay with that.