Behold the Junk Drawer

Apparently I’ve been on a “make new websites” kick this year. After making two new ones for a friend/client, I recently launched a little blog for myself.

The idea to create a separate blog from this site crept up on me. In last year’s annual recap I noted that I wanted to start writing more, and not only about web dev stuff. Yet every time I thought of writing something not specific to the web, or my projects, it felt odd to do it here. So I just didn’t.

The opportunity presented itself to create the new site and test out using WordPress as a headless content management system (CMS) for Eleventy. I had previously played around it with enough to validate it was worth a closer look, thanks to this article by Dave Davies.

Overall it went pretty smoothly! I’m currently writing up the process to publish here as an article, although it’s going slowly. And, it’s a bit longer than I expected. Once I have it all done I may break it into parts: one for setting up WordPress and one for setting up Eleventy. Hoping to at least be close to being done by the end of the week.

In the meantime, check out my new blog, the somewhat ridiculously named Dana Byerly’s Digital Junk Drawer. So far it’s been fun having a new context-free space to emit whatever pops into my head.

It’s almost coming up on the two year mark here at this site! I’ve been kicking around some ideas for redoing, or at least tweaking the homepage. Nothing drastic, but a freshener nonetheless. I also have a plan to clean up the Projects section.

I recently saw a relatable post in the Eleventy discord, “I have arrived at that point in my Eleventy career that I tackle computed data”. Thanks to the Junk Drawer project I recently arrived at the point too! And, it’s given me some insight on how to address something in the Projects section I’ve been wanting to figure out. I’ll talk more about that when I get to it, and about using computed data in the Junk Drawer in the upcoming WordPress/Eleventy article(s). (Articles are now posted!).

In the meantime I’m busy trying to maintain some level of composure and consciousness in the heat, hope you’re having better luck than I am!