Along with WordPress 5.0, came the Twenty Nineteen theme, and it seemed like something I should grab with both hands too, so, if you’re wondering what the Twenty Nineteen theme looks like… then wonder no more, you’re looking at it!
Pretty cool.
AMP
AMP is the Google-launched fully Open Source mobile page speed project and service which is an abbreviation of the phrase “Accelerated Mobile Pages”.
Capable of being served directly from Google, or other search engines, without ever hitting your server, AMP pages are very very light pages which load really fast on handheld devices like smart phones and small tablets, to facilitate a speedy mobile web, even over bad and slow connections.
AMP Stories are now Web Stories… and they’re pretty cool
I know, right. I don’t say things like “pretty cool” but AMP stories are now called Web Stories, have a WordPress plugin, are officially supported by Google, and feature a simple drag-and-drop interface to allow you to create mobile friendly content which looks like this:
24 Hour Live Streaming The Inbetweeners
So anyway, apparently, this is a thing… The UK’s Channel 4 is now 24 hour live streaming The Inbetweeners on YouTube… well, “Best of the Inbetweeners“.
Speed up your WooCommerce Store
A few days ago, a long post about speeding up WooCommerce went live @ the Silicon Dales website. Check it out at the link if you’re interested in some ways in which you can get some speed gains for a WooCommerce store (or WordPress site for that matter).
It will take as long as it takes
In a recent Slack chat with some fellow developers, there were certain tasks (like server moves encompassing upgrades to PHP 7, for example) which are not easy to specify in terms of how long the task may take.
Complete 2019 New Year’s Honours List
The 2019 New Year’s Honours List was published today, on 29 December 2019, and in case you wanted to see the full list, without it being in a PDF, I’ve published it below – minus all the ads and other slowness that mainstream news media will surround their honours list content with.
Navigating the Complete List:
This list is complete and searchable – for example, if you are on a desktop or laptop computer, hit CTRL + F and then type in a county or city (say “North Yorkshire” or “London”) or a surname (like “Wilkinson”) and you can then flip through the relevant items. Alternatively, there’s a table of contents so you can jump to the main sections of honours.
I was able to post this really quickly for the benefit of the world because I have the best broadband in Britain.
Man Utd finally showing old signs of class under Solskjaer
It has been a good year for sports fans in the North West of England in particular, as we’ve been a little spoiled with our area’s sports men and women showing World Class levels of performance, so it was nice to see sleeping giants at Mancester United showing signs of recovery under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer during the Christmas period.
Changing habits in online shopping – smart homes, IoT & automated shopping
In the past. The oldendays. You know, that bricks and mortar world in which the corporeal and the incorporeal were much less, well, combined, we would do things like create lists, and go to the shops to buy the things on those lists.
Search Console Error “Referenced AMP URL is not an AMP”
This error will show up in Google Search Console (AKA Webmaster Tools or WMT) if there is an error with some or all of your AMP pages.
The need for site speed
I just talked about binning Google Analytics, so it seems appropriate to show the speed impact that this action has had on this site.