def Arne.blog

This blog is in a state of flux for the moment, while I’m pushing through some changes that I’ve been willing to do for a long time. The Connections theme has served me well for almost a year now, it’s time for something else. I’ve wanted to make a custom theme ever since I started this blog, but starting from scratch is a bit too much effort given the time I have to work on it. I settled on the fantastic Sandbox theme which is really a bit of a super-uber-theme. It’s complies to the hAtom microformat, and has tons of lovely id and class attributes, so all styling can be achieved through CSS. It even adds an extra menu to the Wordpress panel to switch CSS style sheets (or skins as they call it). I settled on the ‘Spartan’ skin, which I’ll adapt to my needs as time goes by.

I adapted the theme to work with Gengo which is a WP plugin to blog in multiple languages. I’ll make the modified version public after it’s had some polish, so other multilingual bloggers can benefit from it. First I’ll have to extract a new pot-file for translation, since adding Gengo support has made me add a few strings. I’m using the translation from the ‘nl_NL’ locale for the moment, but I’ll make a ‘nl_BE’ version, since using ‘trekbek’ for ‘trackback’ is a bit outrageous for anyone whos name isn’t Kees Van Kooten (and mine certainly is not).

Another novelty are the google ads. It’s a bit of an experiment. Hopefully they will raise enough to cover part of the hosting costs. I also take it as an incentive to write more quality pieces to attract more readers. I’ve been slacking a bit recently… They’re a bit out of the way now, I might try different sizes and positions in the coming weeks and months to see how much difference it makes. It’s been a tough choice wheter or not I would put ads up, but well hosting (and living) ain’t free, and if they bother you just install an ad blocker. I use one myself.