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So this week I finally delivered the proof corrections for edition five of PHP Objects Patterns and Practice and inevitably my thoughts turned to blogging about it. So I took a look around here.

Ouch.

Time for a reboot obviously. I have lots of projects to talk about in 2017. I deal with all things writing over at inflatablepress.com – head over there if you’re interested in words about words. But it’s all about the code and the tech right here. Not such a different topic when you come down to it, but not everyone appreciates their poetry rendered in code.

So I need a new site to support my new book and my consultancy. I have just finished NaNoWriMo. And it’s the first day of December. The forces are irresistible. So here’s window one of my advent calendar / WordPress project diary.

Today’s door is: The Decision to Act. Pretty important for any project. So let’s gather some requirements.

Looking about, I can see I need a bit of a design refresh. It needs to be responsive, and easy to manage because I don’t have much time, what with the clients and the writing to manage.

I need a cleaner approach to WordPress development. For other projects I work locally with Vagrant, then I create a staging environment somewhere online for client testing, and often another for continuous integration. The production environment sits at the end of that pipeline. Lovely as it is, WordPress does not lend itself well to that kind of system out of the box. So I’ll need to see what tools and practices are out there to help.

I’ll need to review my content, features and site structure.

I’ll need to decide on the plugins I’ll be using.

Well, that kicks me off. And even though it’s cold out there, I’d better go for a run to clear my mind. I’ll bring back a picture.

Check back tomorrow when I begin to think a bit harder about development.

photo credit: Dave Hamster 1935 Singer Nine “Le Mans” via photopin (license)