I mentioned the other day I was looking at a flat-file, low-overhead PHP blogging platform called HTMLy as a way to automate a bunch of shit for this journal. We're on it, baby. Lemme explain in slightly less hurried, delirious detail why I've chosen to do so.

So before now, all journal posts were written as raw HTML directly into Notepad++. No AutoSite, no automation at all, just what I wrote is what you see. That worked fine, but it became a gradually bigger pain in the ass month after month. Links constantly needed updating; a new month would arrive and I'd have to move the old posts to another page, then fix all the image links. When I added another month to the archive, that became another manual link to add to every single archive page, plus the main page.

I knew WordPress was really not a solution because WordPress is now general CMS software, not blogging software. It has a bunch of shit for shops, various media players, Google Analytics plugins—none of which I want for a basic HTML journal. It's fine for Letters, since Letters needs to be easy enough and robust enough for the group to use, but even there, it's literally thousands of PHP files strewn about my SFTP folders, forced CSS I'd have to do the !important dance to work around (the infamous no-height images on RetroZilla still haunt me), and I'd have to worry about using a browser new enough to access the admin features—or indeed, the fucking post editor itself.

I wanted the ease of typing posts in Notepad++, but with the efficiency of a lightweight little PHP core sorting everything for me. HTMLy has provided exactly that. Here's the benefits of it over either WordPress or the previous manual setup:

1. No database! Posts are just text files stashed in a single directory. No worrying about an editor outside of the one I already like to use, and it means as long as the computer has a text editor and FTP access to my servers, I can edit my posts. I don't think I need the admin console for a single thing outside of clearing the cache, I can do everything else in Notepad++.
2. Posts are literally just Markdown. Markdown is quick and easy and great. No more typing out tons of <p> tags over and over. If I want to insert HTML, I can (and I still do for images because I'm specific about how I want them formatted), but there's no need to for most things.
3. Automated old post sorting, as said. No need to ever play with my old posts now that I've got them migrated over. No more link rot, no more need to update stuff by hand, HTMLy handles all the links for me.
4. Permalinks to individual posts! Yeah, before, there was no way to link to individual posts, which is probably fine for what I use the journal for, but it's nice to have the option in case I'm referring to a specific entry. Now, yep, got it.
5. Pagination! One really big bonus to the automation is that I can afford to put pagination on all the blog entries and navigation pages. You've got your choice of browsing the whole archive, individual years, individual months, and browsing update-to-update now.
6. RSS! If you'd like to feed your reader, here's the feed link. Perhaps I would've cringed at the idea of making it so easy to find and stalk my real-life updates back when I started the journal, but after having some git at work showing my managers all my cute animal people doodles and random thoughts, I'm over that particular creeping fear. If I didn't want you to read it, I wouldn't put it online. (Plus it means these journal entries will be automatically posted to the Somnolescent server! Poggers!)

I lucked out. It's perhaps easier than the old way of writing these posts, certainly easier than the old way of sorting these posts, with all the benefits of WordPress and none of the drawbacks. Good times. (I didn't bother making any of the links redirect properly. Too much work. I consider it okay because /aboveground/journal/ is still where all this is located.)

Beyond that, I'm still settling back in at home, playing with site stuff and enjoying my CDs. I haven't fully gotten through either because I'm ADHD, but Counting Crows' Recovering the Satellites and Ash's 1977 are both really fucking good from the first half of each. I'm gonna try to get a post on my experiences at both of the record stores I visited in Wales up on Letters, because they're fun enough stories that I think they should be separately highlighted from the trip diary.

And as for that! I do have the photos on my computer, I'll be continuing to write the diary entries today. Telling you, it's just gonna be an avalanche of content from me this month. Every day, something new!

I'm waiting on a new mouse with a not-fucked-up scroll wheel before I do any more art, but here's a monk-y fantasy Colton I drew on Caby's big screen tablet while I was visiting her. I guess it's an unintentional redraw of the Maldwyn I did back in March 2022, but Colton's a lot more of a doof. He was actually the first lad I got into drawing back when I was toying with the idea of art in 2021, but I've never shown any of that off because I didn't have the confidence then. Maybe I'll scan in all the printer paper sometime. Would make a cute cammy.somnol page.