Domain Change

My online presence is going through a bit of a rethink at the moment and one element of this includes the Darker Skies domain name that has been running on this website for a number of years.

To be honest, I’ve never really taken to the darker-skies.com domain name so I’ve decided to get rid of it after a lot of thinking. I think a new Darker Skies related domain name is needed – something that fits the blog better. Time to put my thinking cap on!

Next year i will be developing this site further and to do a thorough job the domain needs to go. The blog, however will remain and can be accessed through its regular WordPress address of www.darkerskies.wordpress.com

Pressed Pictures

There are plenty of photography apps out there but the Pressgram iPhone app is one that i’m really looking forward to seeing. Quite simply the app works like Instagram but posts the images directly to a WordPress.com or .org site. So i could connect the app to this website and post directly here. I really like the sound of that.

The launch date is currently August 2013 which means that it would be ready, fingers crossed, for my next trip up to Scotland. If it is ready, then i do intend using it to document my travels. Will it stop me using Instagram?  No, i don’t think so, but it is very easy to see why some people would love to have this app as an alternative.

The Pressgram blog can be found at http://blog.pressgr.am/

Lighten Up

The DS blog has had a bit of a makeover to refresh the layout and feel of the website. I was getting a bit fed up of the dark theme and thought it was time to lighten up. Brighten up.

Another bonus to the new theme was a widening of the sidebar which has also been tweaked to include the new widgets for Twitter and Instagram photos.

I have tried to add my feed from App.net but so far no luck. Looks like it will remain a work in progress. For some reason the widget doesn’t recognise the RSS feed.

So there we have it. I rather like the lighter look and the sidebar is much, much better. 🙂

Conversion Completed

Yes! Yesterday, the final galleries of the portfolio were converted over to the SlideShowPro system and the WordPress gallery plugin I’d been using was deleted. I finally got rid of what i regarded as the weak link in the chain from the website.

The gallery plugin hadn’t been updated for over a year, with the developer just abandoning his creation – no word, no improvements, nothing! I just knew that eventually i would update WordPress and find that the galleries no longer functioned. Sadly, the options available in the plugin repository were rather lacking in features, and so i ended up looking for alternatives outside of the WordPress system.

So what now? There is plenty left to do, with the work now focussed around the editing of gallery images and uploading them the website.  I am, for once, ahead of schedule  – the complete conversion to SlideShowPro was pencilled in for completion by the end of January – any further developments this month will be an added bonus.