It is now a little over two months since the relaunch of this website, and progress has been quite slow, perhaps painfully slow. A succession of energy-sapping heatwaves in the UK has not helped. When the maximum temperature exceeds 32 degrees Celsius (roughly 92 in Fahrenheit), it does get quite difficult to do anything taxing, mentally or physically. Today, there is an amber warning of extreme heat issued by the Met Office (the UK’s national meteorological service responsible for public weather services), and the maximum temperature is forecast to reach 35 degrees Celsius (95 in Fahrenheit) in the afternoon. Rather like its owner, the ageing computer cannot handle heat that well. The fans are in noisy overdrive.
Making the site shipshape and seaworthy for what will hopefully turn into a long journey across the wide ocean that is the internet has been the goal, ever since I decided to relaunch the site back in early April. Even though the site was rough and ready at the relaunch in June after weeks of preparation, fine-tuning was always necessary, and it has stayed safely sheltered in the harbour. Fixing the small holes and leaks in the CSS file — which determines the styling and designing the visual layout of the site — for instance has been time-consuming. Plugging one hole almost invariably led to two new holes emerging.
Getting the overall site structure and a template for individual pages within the site right has thus been a challenge. Right, not perfect. Perfection is unattainable and aiming for such is a sure recipe for frustration, procrastination, and — ultimately — inaction. However, not leaving problems whenever and wherever detected is important. An hour spent now fixing something probably translates into saving ten hours fixing the same issue a few months down the line.
Inevitably there are still issues with the site, many aspects to improve, and of course new problems will become apparent over time, however the site has reached a point, where I can concentrate on creating content, rather than worrying about and constantly fiddling its structure or page template. Hopefully the site does not sink immediately after sailing off into the high seas.