I am – or was – a professional software developer. I spent over 45 years developing commercial software, mostly of high quality. The term “development cycle” is one that I have heard so many times that it may be tattooed on my forehead. So why, in the 9 years since I started this blog, have I not upgraded the underlying blogging software?
Laziness, mostly. And a firm belief that if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.
But now it is broken. Well, it has been broken for several years, really. Those few of you who followed the blog in the early years might recall that the blog’s original theme included a graphic banner. That disappeared about 5 years ago. The feature that allowed a reader to filter by date or tag was lost two or three years ago. It is no longer possible now to scroll back in time further than the list of posts that are provided on the page. All of these features just disappeared, without warning, over time, as, I presume, parts of the underlying technologies became incompatible with each other. I am now getting warning messages that the WordPress blogging software that is the keystone to the whole operation is about to become obsolete.
I can no longer ignore all of these failures. Time to bite the bullet and try to bring the blog up to date. This is going to require some work on my part. That is okay – I am retired and with the coronavirus raging, what better time to stay indoors and work on a project like this? But there is a risk that I could screw it up and completely break the whole thing. I am hoping that the technologies that need to be upgraded are forgiving and “idiot proof.” But I think it is possible that the blog could go dark for a while.
My hope, however, is that the upgrade will go smoothly and the the blog will emerge with all of the original capabilities restored. And maybe some new ones added. The look-and-feel will certainly change.
If you have any thoughts about features to be added, let me know.
Otherwise, please just pray that I don’t mess this up.