by 
Updated on June 14, 2022
Here’s an update on what I’ve been doing with the blog since, well, the last update.
Shutting down the Patreon page
I’ve decided to shut down my Patreon page. Despite running it for a bit over a year, I’ve not gotten much out of it, with few patrons. (However, I thank those who did participate.)
Instead, I’ve opted to adjust the site’s Google ads. For those that’d like to show support, they can whitelist my blog in their browser’s ad blocker.
Blogging frequency
I’m still blogging at three times a week. So far, the schedule’s working out well; there’s been no real drop in traffic, and it makes things easier to only come up with new material three times a week.
Removed customized featured/popular posts from sidebar
I gave making customized featured posts and popular posts by category a go, using Jetpack’s feature to only display sidebar widgets on certain categories. However, it ended up feeling like more work than it was worth.
If wondering, I normally go through the previous week’s statistics in Google Analytics to manually update the popular posts list. There are plugins that’ll do it automatically, but the ones I saw either hadn’t been updated in awhile, looked poorly done, or felt like overkill.
Social media icons
I’ve adjusted the social media icons in the sidebar yet again, opting to go back to monochrome-colored ones.
The site’s theme
I’m still using GeneratePress as a site theme, plus the usual customizations: a child theme with a mix of plugins, HTML, CSS, and PHP. So far, I’m not itching to jump to a new theme.
I’ve occasionally thought about actually buying the premium version of GeneratePress; it costs $40, and comes with a year’s worth of support. It’d let me do even more customizing to the site, plus offer some new and improved site features. It also might be less work than my current manual alterations.
