Despite some setbacks in the advance of science, we really are living in an age of miracles. Computers in your pocket. Self driving cars. Foxes that are cute, cuddly pets.
And now, humanity’s greatest achievement: a link to the second page of posts on the Beat.
As I travel this great nation of ours, I am constantly asked, “Why isn’t there a link to more posts at the bottom of the Beat’s home page?” People are so addicted to The Beat’s plangent mix of news, reviews, humour and analysis that they become severely agitated when they can only see the front page of posts. The people have demanded MORE.
But alas, the Beat’s template did not include a link to more posts at the bottom, unlike most “blogs.” We are long past the age of “blogs” and customized, categorized widgets are the way forward as of 2013.
However, using the most modern techniques of web technology, we here at Stately Beat Labs have at last created a link to more posts at the bottom of the page.
You can see it highlighted in the graphic above. And if you click it will take you to…more posts.
Actually it will take you to a blog template page that has the most recent post at the top, the second most recent post, second…and all the posts in reverse chronological order. And a “next page” link that takes you back, and you can go back back back…to the dawn of time, turtles all the way down. It is amazing what the mind of a coder can do when they become focused on a goal.
As long as we’re talking meta here, I feel like Mark Watney trapped on Mars when I talk about this stuff. NO ONE does what I do any more – an independently owned website, run mostly by one person, using out of the box templates and software. Which is not to put down the fine folks at Hiveworks, who host this site. The Busy Bees at the Hive have solved many thorny problems here, and uptime has soared since moving over, unlike the olden days when I’d have to restart the server every few hours when traffic got high. So many night staring at the error log and googling code. I’m glad those days are gone!
In another old timer old timey thing, I still occasionally use Ecto to post, one of the first blogging software programs, and still the best, even though it doesn’t have featured images, galleries or any of the main things we use on the web now. But I’ve dragged and dropped things you people wouldn’t believe. Ecto was last updated in 2010 or so, and every time I update my OS I’m terrified it will be broken forever. According to the developer website, a new version is coming to the Mac App Store…I won’t hold my breath but now that we’ve solved the More Posts dilemma, nothing is imopossible.
While I continue to use my old jury rigged solutions, WordPress is rapidly moving forward to the driverless blog. Thanks to Jetpack you can connect a self hosted site (like this) to WordPress.com and do all kinds of things. Backflips! Hand stands! And now WordPress.com blogs can use plugins. The desktop WordPress app used to crash the backend and itself every five minutes, but now it’s pretty smooth sailing, although if you leave it open it becomes a memory hog.
Progress marches on. After 13 years, The Beat is still going! And finally it has “More Posts.”
