website

For a while I used a plugin that allowed me to make good looking ‘recent post’s from all accross the “network” (“multisite”). The owner of that plugin has decided to merge a couple of his plugins and make that a paid product. That is the risk of running a website based on free software. So a new search for a sollution dawned.

Annoyingly, “mu”, later “multisite”, later “network” has been introduced many years ago, but a standard WordPress network has little … network. There is no built-in sollution to simply pull up posts from another website. After all this time, you still have basically totally separate websites, the only ‘network’ is the fact that they run in a single installation. There is no integration between within the website at all.

What is even worse: I seem to have an uncommon request. All I want is that when you are reading an article, you can not only see what are the most recent articles, but also the most recent book, film and music reviews. Is that so weird? I did not find a single plugin that does that, other than the one I would soon have to replace for a paid version.

In the end, I could not find anything better than pulling up the feeds of the different websites and display these feeds. This slowed down the website enormously though (and appears to be the cause for SSL errors), so in the end I decided to do that only on the “New on Gangleri.nl” page and make links there on the other sites… Hopefully I will find something a bit more presentable soon.

All the sudden I felt the need to see if I could produce something more ‘durable’ than publishing online. A website may disappear, but books may change owners or even be available for quite some time. When it would come to publishing books, I had a few wishes. It should be printing on demand, so only copies sold would have to be printed. I also wanted ebook versions to be available. I looked around and found Amazon’s “Kindle Direct Publishing” which -other than the name suggests, is not just for Kindle ebooks. The size of Amazon has another positive point: the book is printed close to where the buyer lives, so less shipping.

Read More »Books

That is weird. I am currently playing around with book-producing (more about that later). I was looking back and noticed that I started Sententia in 1999.

So how the hell did I conclude I had a website since 2001 before? So the new logo ought to be:

I have been playing around a bit with a ‘logo’. The weird line across the word “Gangleri” is a sound-wave. “Est. 2001” is a bit of a stretch. In that year I started my first website Sententia, which a year later became Monas.nl and only in 2007 Gangleri.nl. Of course most of the content moved along to the new domain names and 2001 sounds more ‘interesting’ than 2007, so I used 2001 as “established” year.

The ‘logo’ turned out fairly well, so I decided to use it in the headers too.

He there reader. Yes I do still look at my ‘main website’ every now and then, but I do not always have the time and inspiration to post something here. I do not see a whole lot of films that are ‘worth reviewing’. I do listen to new music, but I think it is a bit odd to review a release that I play on Spotify rather than own it. Besides, also here I seldom run into something really good and I do not want too many of these ‘not really my taste’ reviews. Books, I actually read quite a bit, but I am ploughing through some bigger works; one is even 1500 pages, so that takes a while (I think I am at 80% now though). I also read books that I wonder if they ‘fit’ this website, even though it is fairly general.

I also maintain other websites which aim at a more specific audience or that are about a more specific subject. Of course these websites take effort too.

And, since I do not live behind my PC and my job is behind a PC too so I sometimes want to not look at a screen, things just come when I have both time and inspiration.

Yours truly.

Every few years I get an urge to change themes (sometimes I have to because it is no longer maintained). After some experimenting I usually come back to a similar lay-out with similar colors, etc. What bugged me most about the previous theme is that the post titles were always in all capitals. Now I have found a theme with a nice stack of options. Not perfect, but as of now I am quite happy with the result. You may notice some changes in the menu (ugly centered dropdowns…) and a few colors, such as the menu background color.

I wish you all a good and healthy Yule period.
All the best for 2021

“His or ours, Hank?”

Mine!

I used to use a plugin to pull post titles from other websites under the domain (all ‘sections’ are separate websites) to show in the “widgets” on the sides to get some ‘interaction’ between the different ‘sections’. That plugin had not been updated for over two years, so it is only a matter of time before something changes and it stops working.

So I looked around for an alternative and could not really find anything that made me happy. Then I noticed that WordPress itself has a new widget that has that very functionality. Great! Another plugin that I can ditch. This widget works great in the “sidebars”, but I used the abandoned plugin for the archive pages too.

So I turned off the old plugin to see what would die and believe it or not, it was that old / ‘simple’ plugin that added the hip and ‘new’ widgets that I just discovered. Argh!

So after an entire day of making something fancy with the new tools, I was back at having to look for a plugin that would do what I want. It does not really sound that strange to me. It should be able to make lists of posts of other sites and it should make a list of posts of the ‘section’ website itself for the archive pages. It seems that there is no such thing any more…

WordPress itself now has a “block” to show recent posts, even by category. That would mean that I ‘only’ had to find a plugin that is not abandoned to show the latest posts of other ‘sections’. I soon noticed that it can only list up to 100 posts. I have categories in the book reviews with 170 entries and I have film categories going up to 370!

Then I found a plugin that can make lists of posts and even group them by category. Great for the archive pages, but useless for the widgets since it can only access one site.

So this morning I started experimenting with yet another plugin. It is good in pulling posts from anywhere around, it can present hip carousels and has plenty options, but… It is not good at making archive pages with hundreds of posts…

So I ended up with replacing one old plugin with two new ones. Sigh.

But what do you think of the fancy news page?

I’ve ran a website since 2001 (Sententia) which changed names twice (Monas.nl (2002), Gangleri.nl (2007)). Quite a period, 18 years. I guess that makes me an internet dinosaur.

Currently, there are exactly 100 articles. The last one is from 10 May 2019. My longer texts can lately be found on more specific websites that I made. I do not often have a subject to write an article about here.

626 Book reviews can be found in the book reviews section. I just keep on reading. Not everything I read finds its way to Gangleri.nl, but much of it does. This does not have the speed of the next section of course.

1163 Film reviews. Watching a film is just sit and watch for two hours which goes much faster than reading a book. Many films I see are not all that interesting, so reviews are usually short.

The music reviews are almost taken over by the film reviews in number. Currently there are 1205 music reviews.

From the few new additions on the website, you can see that my focus has shifted a bit in the recent years from heathenry to Freemasonry. I still study heathenry, but more in combination. Also Traditionalism is still in my reading list, but lower. I still see a lot in that way of thinking, but as it is too restrictive for my own path, it landed lower on my list. Also there do not seem to be a whole lot of new books or initiatives in that field. However, also here a combination with Freemasonry (and that is an interesting one) pops up in the works of Fabio Venzi or that of Angel Millar. Currently I am reading a book that I am not supposed to have, so it will not find its way to these pages. It is one of the few studies of the Northern European origins of Masonic symbolism. With less priority I am also reading a Manticore Press book and an Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (transactions of the first Masonic study lodge). When time comes, you will be able to read what I think about them.

Films prove to be a ‘problem’ recently. I do not hear of many films that I want to see. There is not all that much dark and weird. Besides, my DVD rental has made it more difficult to get me ‘enough’ films, so I have opted to fall back to Netflix for film nights for which I do not have anything. Netflix does not have really good films, so watching films has become mostly ‘brainless past time’. I do still enjoy watching films, but I rarely see anything really interesting.

I no longer keep statistics. This website has never been really popular. Who reads a website with book, film or music reviews these days anyway? For myself, there is one website with reviews that I follow (Noise Receptor) and one with film reviews (Filmofiel, which is in Dutch). For the rest, I probably have the same alternatives as everybody else. Ratings on websites (IMDb for example), information in webshops and newsletters. I use my own website mostly as archive. When I want to know if I saw a film or if I have an album, I check Gangleri.nl. If there is anything that helps anyone, good.

Sincely,
Roy