Expect to see much change on the site in the coming months, although initially it may be the opposite.

I am currently looking into a new design for the site but, unlike before, it won’t be one of my own – but rather designers who know better than I do I’m moving towards a more mobile friendly magazine format with posts associated with just a small selection of categories. I’ve recognised that the site is organised quite eclectically at the moment with customer service reviews nestling next to advise on WordPress plugins – a clear division will enable you to concentrate on the area of the site in which you’re interested.

To this end I’ve already started organising the categories into which the posts fall. I’ve also started reviewing some of the posts, combining where there is an historic thread.

However, none of this means I’m going to change direction in my post content – this will remain the same. It will just be easier to navigate and be presented in a better format.

If you have any ideas of your own on any of this, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.

A number of years ago now this site started off as my personal blog. Politics, news and general rants were the topics, with the occasional review of tech products that I’d bought. In time the latter started to take over and my new-found interest in writing WordPress plugins.

As a result the site has become more a commercial venture and personal posts now seem inappropriate to the point where I rarely add any. None-the-less I wanted to still put finger to keyboard occasionally so I decided to separate out my personal posts. I looked at 3 different ways to do this…

1. Get the site to exclude personal posts and list them in their own separate section. Sadly, excluding one category from certain parts of WordPress is not as simple as it seems and just caused me problems when I tried it.
2. Use the Multisite option in WordPress to set up a secondary site. Unfortunately, as I have an established site with set (and indexed) URLs, introducing a 2nd site would likely to cause problems.
3. Create another site. Thankfully I already had one. A few months ago I decided to create a separate sandboxed WordPress installation for testing my plugins. Hardly used except for the odd bit of testing I realised this would be the ideal candidate – I can still use it for testing as if this site goes down for a short while it’s not a big deal.

So, I’ve done it. The sandbox website has had a splendid new theme (although not of my design – I used a free “out of the box” one) and I’ve transferred over all my personal posts. Many of these are quite old so were in need of TLC – videos spilling out of page widths, missing images, etc. I also had to go through and add new categories to them all (and there’s over 100 posts!).

Click here to visit my new personal site – I’ve already christened it by way of a new post today.

2011 has been a hectic year for me and my WordPress plugins. I’ve learnt an awful lot – especially thanks to the excellent book Professional WordPress Plugin Development. As a result I’ve been re-visiting a lot of my plugins and vastly improving their code quality and capabilities.

I’ve also got rid of my first plugin.

Plugins that have been given a fresh lick of paint are (in no particular order)…

• Artiss PSN Status
• Artiss AdSense Insert
• Artiss Content Reveal
• Artiss Draft List
• Artiss Code Embed
• Artiss Twitter Data
• Artiss Relative Date
• Artiss YouTube Embed

You’ll notice they all begin with “Artiss” – another change which is part of a new re-branding exercise. Some of these, however, were modified early on and will be due a further update to bring them totally in line with current standards.

Existing plugins due for an upgrade in 2012 are…

• Flu Pandemic Level
• Google Docs Viewer
• Simple Social Bookmarks
• Simple Timed Content
• Simple URL Shortener
• WP README Parser

Simple Feed List is to be re-written from scratch with feed duties being all “in house” rather than relying on WP’s built in RSS functionality (which appears to be rather flaky).

Artiss Facebook Link, Simple Twitter Link and Simple Buzz Link will all be merged into one new plugin, Artiss Social Link.

Android App Share, Simple Readbag List, Simple TTIW List and Simple Wakoopa List will all be merged into a single new plugin, the name of which is yet to be decided. It will also allow for other sites that provide XML data.

WP Plugin Cache will be abandoned (as all caching will be performed by individual plugins).

What all of this will mean is a reduction in the number of plugins, by merging a number of similar products. However, all are due to recieve the “full monty” of additions so, rather than adding the odd small feature, most should require minimal maintenance in future. Plugins such as Social Bookmarks and YouTube Embed, however, are likely to continue to have big changed applied to them.

If after this I find some time, I have a number of plugins that I’d like to turn my hand to, including a banner rotation plugin. There are a number available in the market but none that offer what I need (and I’m not being particularly needy either) – it was actually a user who asked me about this after coming across the same problem.