Changelog

Made a new post format so I can publish smaller, short-form pieces. This involved some design updates to post layout to simplify things and to the post archives page.

I also took the opportunity to adjust a few things on the homepage to increase performance while I was at it, like not loading any of my main javascript file, which is only really used on post and photoset pages. I also removed Google Analytics as I realize I never check it and am happy with Fathom analytics alone. And I adjusted how I load my cloud.typography webfont to be lazy-loaded by using a tip from Harry.

Migrated my Jekyll site to Netlify and off of my AWS S3/Cloudfront setup that I've had for many years. All of my images are still hosted on an S3/Cloudfront subdomain though. I like how easy Netlify makes publishing (no more running several command line commands to push to S3).

Updated Stuff I use page to mention that I now use my MacBook Pro a lot for Swift/SwiftUI development with Xcode for an app I'm tinkering with.

Made a changes.xml feed for people to subscribe and follow along on minor updates to my Stuff I use and related pages.

Began using Fathom analytics after becoming annoyed with my Gaug.es not getting around to implementing the required SameSite cookie fix, which now produces a console error. Fathom is a new, simple and privacy-focused website analytics tool that does not use cookies or track any personal data at all.

Updated my old favicon, added a higher quality png fallback and new updated SVG favicon with prefers-color-scheme: dark media query to go a bit more dim/desaturated for people browsing on dark mode devices.

After almost 2 months worth of nights and weekends spent designing, prototyping and building, I released a new work page to highlight my design work. Eventually I would like to have more in-depth writing on each project but for now it's more of an interactive index/teaser page of sorts.

Adding more whitespace to post content. More space between headings, lists, media and so on. Just some tiny refinements.

Slight adjustments to homepage layout. Made posts column wider than photos column (photos column used to be 58% wide, now it's 44% wide). I decided I wanted the posts to be wider to accomodate some larger font-size for the post title and description text, along with the byproduct of having posts align with the width of the about text at the top of the site.

I used to have a list of more posts to read after each blog post. I decided to simplify and remove it entirely. My posts are so long that they're not getting seen much way down there and most people are just going back to the homepage anyways. I also used that as an opportunity to make the footer where I have my brief bio larger and full-width; like a part of the actual page footer.

Slight redesign of the /photos/ index page. Instead of two columns—one for collections and one for single photosets—I made one full-width stream of posts in reverse chron order. I didn't like how the two columns split up the types of posts (especially annoying on mobile where collections would show first and single photosets would be far, far below).

I could have written some JS to resort the collections or show a different list of items in the correct order but didn't feel like overly complicating things. I started to feel like the photos deserved a full-width treatment instead of optimizing for density.

With the new design I also took the opportunity to make collections look more distinct from single photosets. In addition, I added a way to filter the list to show collections only with a toggle. I had also built the ability to toggle photosets that were marked as my favorites.. but I couldn't decide which photosets were my favorites so I hid the feature for now.

Split up the Stuff I use page with a separate Software I use page and also wrote a page called About this website. Also redesigned the Tweet prompt that comes up at the bottom of articles once scrolled down a bit. Add an SVG favicon (though that feature is not yet live in Chrome so it doesn't do anything for now). Added metadata tags for theme colors for Android Chrome and iOS Safari header bars.

Migrated to my own email server to power newsletter and email notifications. Hosted on an AWS Lightsail box running Sendy with AWS SES.

Added a new place list as part of my Amsterdam photoset.

Redesign the photos index page and some parts of photo pages as part of the Rwanda photoset.

Rewrote image source changing logic to more consistently load proper resolution photos depending on image width. Ability to have a cover video now as well. Designed some new location heading styles as well as card modules for various items/places. As part of my first New Zealand photoset.

High-DPI mode for photosets. There's now the option to load a wider layout with higher resolution images on photosets.

Slight footnotes tweaks. You can now hover over footnotes to see them inline instead of having to go to the bottom of the post.

Updated photoset collection index page and display of cover photos. Larger photos with loader that uses smaller version in black and white and fades to high-res (as large as supported by current page width) when it loads.

Redesigned the photos index page and adjusted some things on photoset index pages.

Removed old lightbox, implemented new photoswipe-based one for photosets

Redesigned and wrote the camera gear and stuff I use pages with new product item modules.

Moved off of Typekit and began using cloud.typography.com so I could use the lovely Whitney typeface. Lots of additional site tweaking to various text style throughout the site to get it to look good everywhere.

Misc new article components to support hover-to-play on videos and captions for them for use in my Designing Twitter Video article.

Lots of mobile testing and fixes.

Main site and photos section now use the same javascript file, and share a bit of the same CSS. First use of this was my drone post so I could have photo grids inside a regular blog post.

Some slight tweaks for photo stories to support adding various trip data at the beginning of posts in my France collection. Also some new titles so I could add places as headings in this Seattle photoset.

Substantial redesign from merging two jekyll installs to one, now with Jekyll 2.0 collections support. New site includes masonry-powered homepage and photos page elements.

Updated photoblog

Removed Swiftype search integration. Not many people searched on the site and I wanted to remove the extra CSS/JS associated. I also wanted the extra room in the header to move some things around.

Redesigned header from this to this.

Migrated site from Heroku to S3 site hosting with CloudFront. Using AWS Route 53 DNS.

Moved photoblog to its own nested Jekyll setup, with a redesign.

Complete redesign of website, migration to Heroku and rack-based Jekyll.

Details: Designing a responsive, Retina-friendly site, Developing a responsive, Retina-friendly site (Part 1), Developing a responsive, Retina-friendly site (Part 2).

Site redesign and migration from WordPress to Jekyll: How To: WordPress to Jekyll