I just found out that my grandma Betty passed away this morning and I am absolutely gutted. I knew this day was coming and I tried bracing myself for it, but the very second I heard the news, my heart started to ache. Knowing that I’ll never get to see her smile or share a laugh with her again feels like almost too much to bear.
She was one of the most influential people in my life and now she’s gone. At least she gets to be with my grandpa Bill now. I know that’s what she wanted the most.
This past year has been the best one of my life. I’m so happy that I get to spend every single day with you and Rowdy. I can’t think of a better person to wake up to in the morning or go to sleep with at night. You are my heart. You are the subatomic particles that make up my entire universe. You are my density. You are my everything and I adore you.
Here’s to the next year and the rest of our lives. Happy anniversary, my little churro.
Even though W3 Total Cache seems to have become the more popular and robust option for WordPress caching, I’ve stuck by and continue to recommend WP Super Cache.
Why? In a word: simplicity.
Now I could write a big long entry on why simplicity trumps a crapton of options and flexibility, but I’d rather have a look at the options screen for each plugin.
We’ll start with WP Super Cache:
This is all you see when you visit the settings page post install. If you really wanted to, you could just turn caching on and call it a day. Of course, you could (and should) go poking around under the hood a bit – so let’s look at the Advanced tab:
So that’s a bit more extensive — and in some places, downright nerdy — but all of the crucial options stay above the fold. Furthermore, the blue button after the first set of check boxes and radio buttons does a pretty good job of saying “this is where all the really important stuff ends”.
Now let’s compare that to the options that W3 Total Cache presents to users post install:
While that’s pretty straightforward, it’s also a lot for someone who’s new to the plugin to take in. Not only that, it doesn’t really make it all that clear what the user should try if they’re getting started.
Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a me thing at all. As much as I could be a hater, I’m talking from experience here.
You see, I deal with a pretty significant number of WordPress users over the course of my work week. And there’s always a handful that are running W3 Total Cache that have enabled some combination of Varnish, CDN & CloudFlare. The only problem is, they don’t actually have access to any of the those services.
In most cases, they were told they needed to install a caching plugin, pronto. It’s not their fault if they’re taking a shotgun approach to using it. It’s the plugin author’s fault for not making things clearer.
So until W3 Total Cache gives end users a better out of the box experience, I’m going to keep running and recommending WP Super Cache. If you’re tired of being buried under an avalanche of options that you never use, I suggest you check it out.
Update: Frederick Townes responded on Twitter and claimed that W3 Total Cache was incomplete and sporting the “advanced” UI. Hopefully they’ll be able to roll out something a little more end user friendly soon.
Now that the most recent versions of Safari & Firefox support proper hyphenation via CSS3, I kind of want to implement it on my sites. But thanks to Microsoft Word, I also have some really strong feelings against auto-hyphenation.
It only appears to be on sale for the next 6 hours tho. And even after the AUD to USD conversion, it’s still pretty close to $40. So if you want it and don’t mind shelling out a little money, act fast.
Me: You’re a Latina. You have a culture. I’m a WASP. Nerd culture is all I’ve got. Her: You’re grasping at straws. Me: I might be, but those straws are +2 to my constitution.
While I never intended for it to be anything more than something a few friends would laugh at, all of this attention is compelling me to add a couple new features. Hopefully I’ll find a little time in the next week to do both a “work safe” filter and a “submit a word” form, but I’m not going to go and make any grand promises.
At the end of the day, I’m just happy that people are finding something that I made funny (and/or useful) and I don’t want to squander that. So if anyone has suggestions for features, let me know!
Update: I’ve gone ahead and made the whole site work safe by cutting the instances of “fuck” and “shit” out of the database. Now you can use the output for whatever work related designs you’d like.
Update: I put a “submit a word” form up yesterday, but we ran into the submission limit for the free account on Wufoo. I’ve since replaced it with a form I slapped together in Google Docs. I really hope I can get some time to go thru the suggestions soon and hand pick/add some of the better ones to the site. Thanks again for all the love, everyone!
Since I’m downright stubborn about switching to Chrome, I was really happy to see that someone had tried to emulate its location bar with Safari Omnibar. It’s got a little way to go still, but it’s got enough promise for me to keep it installed.
Now all I have to do is break my habit of hitting CMD + L followed by a quick Tab to get me to the search field and I’ll be golden.
