Is Focus worth It?
The short version of this story, I toyed with moving my main site — astrofish.net — to WordPress and the biggest problem, at the time, was there was no easy way to remove the “Proudly run by WordPress” tag line until I discovered the Thesis Theme.
Been with the theme and the backend engine WordPress, ever since. Look under the hood, see what makes this baby tick?
The developer has had a long and somewhat tortured past, fraught with cataclysmic mistakes, and a generous redoubling of effort to improve. There was one upgrade I passed on, and the revision to the revision proved worth the wait. Over time, patience, and certain kind market resilience that I admire, keeps this software ticking along.
There’s also a youthful tenacity that I admire, and one that I really now sadly lack myself.
After writing primarily for electronic distribution, since 1993, and feeling my way along, as a pioneer I know there’s a certain kind of resilience and flexibility required. I recently “skinned” a buddy’s website, and he had major freakout, although, his outdated theme was showing up with its issues, wouldn’t scale across larger and smaller screens, images that were pixelated or imploding texts.
“Update or die!”
Yeah, so that sounded better in my head.
Still, there’s a sense that I like to do as little as necessary to maintain the various sites I run. Simple motor, simple moving parts, simple solutions to complex problems.
What was once a simple issue of a screen that was small window for text has exploded into theatre-wide monitors and smart phones in both “landscape” and portrait” mode, with every combination of form factors in between.
One my ruling elements, thematic pieces that works across all I do?
“Scalable.”
Has to be “scalable.” For me, that’s gone from a working situation where I don’t care if my horoscopes are read by one or one hundred, or one thousand, the experience remains constant. No more work required from me. Then, too, this term means that the work at the address — astrofish.net — will appear in a constant fashion across a myriad of “platforms,” or be “device agnostic.”
In a recent iteration, WordPress itself moved to being “mobile friendly,” and “device agnostic,” to a certain extent with both mobile and desktop variations available. I’m sure there’s a cost in processing time, machine overhead, but worth it, as up to half a site’s traffic can be on phones.
Is Focus worth It?
I bought in at the right time, at the right price — developer’s package for under $200, maybe a half-dozen years back. The new pricing, I’m certainly not fond of, but then it’s the same structure that I use: subscription.
I balked, briefly, at the price, $100 per year, but then, as a person in business myself, I know the value of the subscription model. It’s current and when it no longer works? Cancel. But I don’t like to cancel, and I liked the one price, but I’m not in charge. Don’t like the price structure, love the product.
Is Focus worth It?
I miss the tiny bit of joy buried in the older versions, when it updated, the last phrase? “The update was a ravishing success!”
Focus is worth It
(1) Current listing includes:
- astrofish.net Horoscopes
- astrofish.blog current weblog
- kramerwetzel.com old web journal
- BexarCountyLine.com image blog
- Bubba’s daphuk.com (NSFW)
