Design

  • 2–4 minutes

    New website design

    Each year, I redesign my website to utilise new WordPress features. This year’s attempt focused on full-site editing and a bold graphic style, though AI tools fell short in originality. Key innovations included a unique duotone cover block, creative grid layouts using query offsets, and a custom blur effect from a custom plugin.

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  • 3–4 minutes

    First thoughts on Twenty Twenty-Two and Full-Site Editing

    WordPress 5.9 was launched a few weeks ago, and I was very eager to test full-site editing on my personal site. I loved the Eksell theme, but the desire to explore this massive change in the WordPress workflows was bigger. Site editing is still in beta, which means that the WordPress core team is busy

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  • 1–2 minutes

    New website look

    I like changing the design of my site from time to time. I enjoy the process of looking around and toying with the colours. Theme The last theme I had used was the Twenty Twenty theme. That one was based on the Chaplin theme by Anders Norén. When looking for a new theme, I was

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  • 1–2 minutes

    Drawing our daughter’s birth card

    One of the things I like a lot is that my dad drew my birth card. A birth card is an announcement we send in the mail when a baby is born, which is apparently not a global thing. My dad’s not a professional artist at all, but making the card himself adds so much

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  • 2–3 minutes

    Extreme Makeover: The Homepage Edition

    As I indicated in a previous post, I gave a workshop at WordCamp Johannesburg about CSS trends. The focus of the workshop was not on me introducing the trends but on the audience trying these features out for themselves. I created a homepage on a temporary site using the Twenty Twenty default theme that’s coming

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  • 3–5 minutes

    CSS trends to add to your stack

    At WordCamp Johannesburg 2019, I gave a workshop about CSS trends. This post is a recap of some of the features we talked about. Below my slides, I’ll give a short introduction to each of these features with some examples and resources to explore. Features explained: Animations Variable fonts Variables Grid & Subgrid Media-queries 4

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  • 2–3 minutes

    New colours and Sass

    For little over two years now I had the same styling on my site. I still really live the Hive theme, so I kept that one around. However, I was keen to try a new colour palette and some new Sass challenges. Colour palette I’m not someone to go invent colour palettes from scratch, so

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  • 4–6 minutes

    Introduction to Sass

    In a previous post, I’ve introduced using Sass through the WordPress Customiser and Jetpack. In this post, I want to quickly explain what exactly Sass is and where to get started. Sass stands for “Syntactically awesome style sheets”, and is basically CSS with superpowers — or “CSS on crystal meth” as I described it in one

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  • 1–2 minutes

    Getting Sassy with WordPress 4.7 and Jetpack

    I’m not a WordPress developer, I’m a WordPress site builder. I don’t develop the blocks to create a website, I use those that others have created. Those blocks are themes and plugins. Tweaking designs However, the styling and design will not always look exactly like you want. You’re happy with the majority of it, but

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  • 1–2 minutes

    Purpose-Driven Website: What on Earth Is Your Website Here for?

    Follow along with the workshop I gave at WordCamp Cape Town last September.

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  • 1–2 minutes

    Attempts at Making Websites: Macromedia Flash

    I’ve started playing around with making websites over a decade ago. The first websites I put online were built with Flash. I know there is a lot of hate against Flash, and I remember it being a tedious work to get it right, especially if you don’t know code (like me). I had to make

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  • 2–3 minutes

    Smart Themes Settings & WP Customiser

    As I’ve shared a few times before, I am not a developer. But that doesn’t mean that I do not enjoy building websites; it means that I am limited to the options that themes and plugins have built-in. I am not able to do a lot of customisations (play with the code). I’ve set up

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  • 1–2 minutes

    Time for a New Website

    I’ve always enjoyed writing, and since I started my first blog in 2007 I haven’t stopped with online publications. Next to my blog, I have written for Breeze, CULTUURSHOCK, and Blikoponeindig. Professionally I have been writing a little bit for Ichtus and CTBC. Lately I have also started a South African sister to our Dutch

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