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permalink: h3rald-v7-overview
filters_pre: 
- redcloth
title: Back on Track...
comments: 
- :date: 2007-06-24 08:43:42 +02:00
  :author: kabturek
  :url: http://kabturek.info
  :id: 4
  :body: |-
    please please allow a diffrent color scheme ( black on white) or whatever .. now i have to use a bookmarklet on every page that resets the styles :)
    
    greets,
- :date: 2007-06-24 09:06:44 +02:00
  :author: anon
  :url: ""
  :id: 5
  :body: I always suspected this was why Cake might eventually fail. Not because the code is weak, but because the core community drives people and possibilities away. Rails has always had a much better culture of openness and freedom. Interesting to see the first high-profile switch...
- :date: 2007-06-24 10:20:22 +02:00
  :author: Fabio Cevasco
  :url: ""
  :id: 6
  :body: |+
    lol @ kabturek... The new theme aims to be relaxing for the eyes, energy-saving and different from the previous one (not that there was anything wrong with it, I just wanted to try something completely different), however I can understand that it could be a bit disturbing for someone... I'll see about changing it or implementing a theme switcher... who knows!
    
    
    
- :date: 2007-06-26 04:38:53 +02:00
  :author: AD7six
  :url: http://www.noswad.me.uk
  :id: 9
  :body: |-
    Hi H3rald,
    
    I hope to still find your articles interesting, whichever MVC flavour they may be.
    
    I like the new site with the exception that I can read almost nothing of what is written in red :). Hypocritical though it may seem (I know that kabturek has his bookmarklet to hand when he visits my site, that he isn't alone, and that I also need to put that style switcher in place). Please choose a brighter red or something else a bit higher contrast :)
    
    Cheers,
    
    AD
- :date: 2007-06-26 04:49:43 +02:00
  :author: AD7six
  :url: http://www.noswad.me.uk
  :id: 10
  :body: |-
    PS. The nav bar is completely invisible (at least to me) until I mouse over. I like black themes but atm it feels like my monitor has it's contrast set too low and brightness too high - except of course it hasn't. I wrote about "colour contrast":http://www.noswad.me.uk/MiBlog/Contrast before, you might want to test your colours out on "Snook's colour contrsat checker":http://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html
    In any event good to see you writing again.
    Cheers!
    AD
date: 2007-06-22 14:38:00 +02:00
tags: 
- website
- rails
type: article
toc: true
-----
...or better, on "Rails":http://www.rubyonrails.org_. 
Yep, this 7th (!) version of the H3RALD website is powered by the overly-popular Ruby web framework _and_ by the "Typo":http://www.typosphere.org blogging platform.

Nope, I decided not to re-develop my website entirely from scratch this time, although I was tempted to, for three simple reasons:

# My "coding time" is close to non-existent nowadays, and even with a framework like Rails re-developing a site from scratch would have taken at least _some_ time, which at the moment I don't have.
# Typo is a fairly robust and feature-rich blogging platform, and after learning a little bit of Rails I could customize it to my needs straight away. URLs didn't break thanks to Rails' routing system, migration was easy enough, and developing the missing bits (like a rudimentary BBCode parser and a TextLinkAds sidebar) wasn't hard at all.
# I wanted to take a break from my site, not code it again.
_Fair enough, but why the new site anyway?_ 

Again, there's more than one answer:

* Lately I didn't feel comfortable sporting a Cake-powered website \- that makes sense, to an extent, right? Good.
* I got fed up with spam. I wanted to re-open comments but I didn't want to implement spam protection for the old site.
* To be totally honest, I got fed up with PHP itself as well, after trying out Ruby for a few days and ordering  and reading the 2nd edition of the "PickAxe":http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ruby/, which I _highly_ recommend.

...But let's say something about what's new in this new release, shall we?

* A new, black (and red) theme. Something completely different. Probably not that good, but quite useful: Every day I check my site from my laptop at work, and if it looks like a big black blob I know that I have to regulate my monitor. I showed it to my parents on their old monitor, and they realized that perhaps it's time to buy an LCD one...
* Comments, trackbacks, desktop client support, theme support, a cool admin area and everything else Typo offers.
* Full RSS feeds. With no ads. So you don't need to see this black blob anymore, if you really don't like it.
* No projects or bookmarks, just my blog and my articles. Let's keep it simple.

More to come...