Friday, October 16, 2009

Blog Templates

I’ve just changed “BlogNomic: The Fifth Metadynasty” back to “BlogNomic: {title}” in the “head” template, in order that individual blog entries have their title given in the <title> field - Googling around for old proposals, everything was coming up with the same title. (In fact, Google’s spidering of BlogNomic is something of a weird mess, with a lot of archive pages lacking the “/archive/” folder, but that’s a problem for another time.)

It looks like Darth changed this a few weeks ago, possibly in a failed attempt to retitle the main page (which takes its title from the “index” template instead). Is it maybe worth setting up a wiki talk page somewhere for this sort of discussion, so that we know who’s changed what, and why?

posted by Kevan at 16 Oct 2009 14:36:28 UTC Comments (8)

Comments

Excalabur:

16-10-2009 17:55:13 UTC

I strongly agree with maintaining documentation/history/etc.  A link in the templates’ comments would probably keep it alive, for at least a year or two.

There was an ‘admin things’ wiki page at some point, which seems to have slumbered out of utility.

redtara: they/them

16-10-2009 19:25:13 UTC

The BN homepage still reads “The First Dynasty of Ais123” on my computer.

Kevan: he/him

16-10-2009 19:51:24 UTC

At the top of the browser while you’re reading the page, or as the title of a bookmark? What browser are you using?

Josh: Mastermind he/they

16-10-2009 19:58:04 UTC

The title of the page, for me, is “BlogNomic: Blog Templates”.

Kevan: he/him

16-10-2009 20:12:18 UTC

The front page, or this page? When I look at http://blognomic.com, I get “BlogNomic: The Fifth Metadynasty” as the title. (This page is “BlogNomic: Blog Templates”, to match the title of this blog post.)

Josh: Mastermind he/they

16-10-2009 20:13:37 UTC

Front page, but I’ve just noticed that it seems to be a bug in my version of Chrome - the page title doesn’t seem to be shifting when I change page. Hmm.

Kevan: he/him

16-10-2009 21:16:31 UTC

Actually, looking at the source for the front page, I’m surprised it even renders at all - it has two <head> sections, the latter containing a second <title> tag (“BlogNomic: [MARAUDERS] The Ghosts of Dynasties Past”) and the header image. I guess this is what you get after four years of template updates from well-meaning passers by.

The argument for a clean ExpressionEngine template (porting across only the few customisations we actually need) is looking a little stronger.

Excalabur:

17-10-2009 00:57:19 UTC

The fact that the source is split over… at least three templates and a stylesheet probably doesn’t help with casual maintenance

As I have some time this weekend, I’ll have a look at new templates.