Why I will continue to run WordPress

During the last weeks I’ve been digging into Jekyll a bit. It’s a simple static site generator. Perfect for simple blogs driven by techy people. It’s super-easy to make a clean site that is free of kodsmuts. Or well kind of. Until you start noticing that you need to add a lot of third-party things and… oops.

Anyway I’ve got the question a couple of times if it isn’t a good idea for me to move my Kodsmuts-blog over to Jekyll. I must say it’s rather tempting. But in the end I’ve decided to keep up with WordPress. Why? Cause WordPress is the kind of CMS you work with to make web sites for clients. Web sites for those who do not know how to push things to Github and who might not even know HTML. I feel a need to try to make a clean site out of a CMS that do work for those people. I am working on a new theme to make this happen. It might not be ready for this blog very soon (because of other side projects) but it will be ready. It will never be done. Cause as in everything web there are and will always be room for improvement.

I think by not switching this blog to Jekyll I will be able to keep it down to earth. I will not feel like everything I write here is something that is ‘easy for me running my little beautiful static thing’. Now I do know that WordPress isn’t the most heavy stuff. I’ve been working with other so-called CMS-systems that are worse. But still WordPress is real enough for me, at the moment.

On diversity and people being weird

Maybe you have noticed the discussion regarding diversity in the tech industry lately. No? Really? I’m pretty sure you have read something about it. Either the cancellation of The British Ruby Conference or the discussion lately around Edge.

There is one thing about this that concerns me and that is after reading several articles, comments, tweets etc. It seems like the general opinion is that diversity is good and we all (most of us) want it. But, and this is where I have a problem, we do not want to do anything to achieve it. It’s bad trying to get a variation of people cause somehow that equals not getting the best people. Tech events for women are discrimination. I’ve been in involved in some tech events for women and whoa, the negative comments you get. In general most of the things that people suggest doing to improve the diversity are criticized.

Kagami is not getting it

This is the thing I do not get. How can it make sense to want something but at the same time not wanting to do anything to achieve it? It’s just like this story my dad once told me about a lady who really wanted to be good at playing the piano. She was asked if she wanted to take some lessons. No, she said, absolutely not, I just want to wake up one day and be really good at playing. People you know what? The world doesn’t work like that. If we want something we need to work for it.

It’s why this year I will try to do my share of changing things. Cause yep, I actually do believe in diversity as well and as a woman I feel like I need to step up. Especially when harassment like what happened to Iris is still around. For me this means that I will continue to tweet and blog. I’ve also said yes to speak at a local meetup. The last thing is something I’ve always said no to in the past since I felt like I was being asked simply because I’m a girl and not because somebody thought I actually had something to say. This year I will stop saying no. I’m going to try speaking now and I think it’s going to be good.

Why I need to do this

I start this “blog-thing” out of frustration. I’ll explain. I’m working with web. Everyday I’m trying to make something that goes out on the internet better. I might not always succeed but I always try my best. I think that’s important to remember. I do this because I love the internet. I think it’s fantastic and I think people should be nice to it. (That’s by the way the subtitle of this blog – “One should be nice to the internet”).

At work and outside I come across things that’s done by other web developers and designers. Some things are new and some old. Because of my work I’m a bit damaged. I can’t help but analyze any new web-thing that I come across. I check the source to see the structure of the markup, I look at the use of colors, the type for the text etc. I come across a lot of things that could’ve been done soo much better. This is frustrating. I use to rant about these frustrating things to my friends. They listen patiently most of the times but to be honest my ranting doesn’t help the internet.

To do at least something I started tweeting about my findings using the hashtag #kodsmuts. The word is kind of swedish (just like me) and I would translate it to something like “dirtyfied code”. Do a search and you will find some mixed things of various quality. But to be honest I’m not sure my tweeting is enough although I have had examples of people actually listening.

Apart from web development there are three things that I really like doing. Taking photos, drawing silly pictures and writing texts. Right now I do neither of these three. Frustrating.

So to cure this frustration I decided to create a place for me on the internet where I can write, post photos and draw. I hope this will turn out to be a good idea. Please wish me luck.

Ps. I know what you are thinking. Why didn’t this ‘so-called’ web developer create a custom theme? I’ll tell you. I needed to get started fast. Before I lost motivation. I don’t throw together a custom theme in an evening. I just don’t. Mainly because I don’t think it will turn out good. So this is how I start.