Changelog

I'm going to try and keep this updated as I make changes to the site. It's not, by any means, a list of every change I've made (I edit things frequently, usually multiple times a day, and I've forgotten most of the earlier edits), but it'll hopefully give a more-or-less comprehensive overview of what I've been doing!

202520242023

4 December, 2023

  • Added a hidden "Re-randomise the phrase" button to the "Index" page
    • This is so I can test how new phrases show up without having to reload the page
    • If you're on a desktop browser, you can reveal it by using "Inspect Element", finding the <button> element, and removing the hidden attribute

2 December, 2023

  • Added a link to my RSS feed in the footer

6 November, 2023

  • Fixed the time attribute on one blog post to match my timezone
  • Added the header for the "5 November" section below, which I forgot at the time

5 November, 2023

  • Added a <link> tag to the "Index" page, referring to my Mastodon profile

2 November, 2023

  • Realised the <code> tag exists, so replaced all the <span class="mono"> tags with that
  • Fixed one of said tags to remove an extra word that was in it

29 October, 2023

  • Changed the footer link colours, to improve contrast

27 October, 2023

  • Did a bit of work on the header and footer
    • Removed the "social" links from the footer, will probably add them to their own page at some point
    • Moved the "Credits" link from the header to the footer
    • Added a "Changelog" link to the footer
  • Made a few CSS changes
    • Added extra spacing to all the text, to hopefully make it easier to read
    • Removed the button-shininess from the footer navigation, since it's now just text without any icons

26 October, 2023

  • Made some changes to the header, to try and make it more mobile-friendly
    • The logo and navigation menu are now centered when in "mobile mode"
    • The navigation menu has been changed from a <ul> (unordered list) element to a <nav> element, to fix some formatting issues that prevented me from centering it properly
  • Changed the ID for the comment sections on posts from "commentsbox" to "comments"
  • Added this changelog to the site!
    • DISCLAIMER: For any dates earlier than this point, the lists of changes will become less accurate—since I haven't been noting every change until now, and my memory isn't all that great, the dates for most changes will reflect when I think I might have made each change.

25 October, 2023

  • Changed the appearance of the header navigation menu, making them shiny buttons like the footer links

24 October, 2023

  • Changed the header tags in non-content areas to ones I thought would be more suitable
    • Publish dates on articles have been changed from <h4> to <time>
    • The smaller date labels on the "Blog" page, as well as in the "Recent Blog Posts" box, have been changed from <h5> to <label>
    • The titles of the sidebar boxes have been changed from <h4> to <p>, and assigned a class to provide them with similar formatting
  • Added a <noscript> tag to the "Index" page, which pops up instead of the randomly-chosen catchphrase if JavaScript is disabled
  • Rewrote the code for the "previous/next" links on blog posts
    • The links now show post titles
    • They're contained within a table, to try and keep the appearance more consistent across posts

21 October, 2023

  • Completely redid the "Index" page!
    • It now serves as a sort of "introduction" to the website—though at this point, it's mainly just a warning that you need to have JavaScript enabled
    • There's a "catchphrase" beneath the logo—it's randomly selected each time you load the page, then it appears via a sort of "typing" animation
    • The original index page (ie. the actual home page) has been moved to /home.html
  • Added comment sections to the blog posts
    • These comment sections use Cusdis, a lightweight system for adding comments to pages (with the option to self-host!)
    • Note that if you post a comment, it won't appear immediately—due to the way Cusdis works, I have to manually approve each comment

20 October, 2023

  • Replaced some of the <div> tags on each page with "semantic" elements
    • The header, content, and footer sections now all use <header>, <main>, and <footer> respectively
    • The contents of blog posts are now enclosed within <article> tags
    • The sidebar and boxes within still use <div> tags, though—I'm not sure what else to use

14 October, 2023

  • Added a {position: sticky;} rule to the sidebar
    • This allows the sidebar to stay on screen as you scroll
    • It only applies to the "desktop mode" of the site—when in "mobile mode", it'll always remain at the bottom of the page

12 October, 2023

  • Added OpenGraph tags to blog posts
    • This allows Discord and Telegram to display basic previews for them

3 October, 2023

  • The website received a favicon!
    • It's the little bird face that appears next to the page name in the tab
    • I drew it myself in LibreSprite, and I'm really happy with how it turned out
  • Also, a second blog post has been published
  • Made some changes to the CSS styling, too
    • It should now display (mostly) without issue on 800x600 displays

16 September, 2023

  • The website received a complete redesign!
    • It's now split into two distinct columns: the main content column, and the "sidebar" column
      • The "sidebar" is home to two things: the "Recent Blog Posts" section, and the "Status" section
    • The space background was removed, and replaced with a plain pink background
      • I experimented with a two-tone pink "checkerboard" background too, but I decided not to use it
      • The plain pink probably won't remain forever—if I can be bothered to, I'll probably try and make a nice pixel art background
  • Zonelets was heavily incorporated into the site, as part of the new design
    • It's what powers the "blog" aspects of the site, as demonstrated by this test post
    • It's also responsible for inserting the header, sidebar, and footer into every page
      • Previously, I'd update the header and footer on every page by myself—this gets more time-consuming as more pages get added to a site

27 August, 2023

  • Added an RSS feed to the site, to go along with the blog that would be implemented in September

31 July, 2023

  • Added a "Credits" page
    • It's got a fancy scrolling effect implemented using CSS animation
  • Implemented a fix for the random fact box on the "About" page
    • Now, if you click the button and it rolls the same number, it'll reroll until it gets a new number—this prevents a situation where you click the button and the fact doesn't change
  • Added a space background to the site

29 July, 2023

  • Threw together an "About" page
    • It features a couple of paragraphs of stuff, as well as a random fact box—click the button to receive a fact!

25 July, 2023

  • Threw together a preliminary design for this website
    • It was a simple, one-column layout: header, then menu bar, then content, then footer
    • No actual content at this point, just the design