It’s been awhile, don’t you think?
I’ve wanted to post new stuff for awhile now, but the site had become so old and languished for so long, it no longer had a sound foundation to blog upon. I’m the only one who maintains this site – including the code for the custom design – and I’ve been busier with other things that prevented me from keeping it up to modern standards. I felt like any new post would draw more traffic to the site and put stress on the parts of it that were literally breaking.
So, at the beginning of this summer, I set a goal: bring The Black and Blue up to modern web standards (or at least enough that it wasn’t breaking) that way I could begin posting again. While visually things don’t look very different, there is a lot of work “under-the-hood.”
None of this is of particular import to you, but if you’re the type of person who likes to know about the nuts-and-bolts and inside baseball of things, I’m happy to expound! Let’s dive into it…
Version 5.0 “Foxtrot”
This version is codenamed “Foxtrot.” The previous theme was “Delta.” If you’re astute, you may notice these are military alphabet terms (and also what us camera assistants use for slating). If you’re even more astute, you may notice that I skipped “E.” That’s because the appropriate word “echo” is used extensively in the coding language PHP that this site (and its foundation, WordPress) is built upon. So, I had to skip it or suffer all sorts of messes, programmatically speaking.
Modern Standards, Streamlined Codebase
The focus of this update was to bring things in line with modern standards. As a result, the site should feel faster, less bloated, and easier to navigate. It should be better to use on a mobile device and it should be less dependent on web technologies that used to be necessary. When refactoring the theme, I prioritized support for modern browsers – ditching all the “hacks” you used to have to have to support legacy browsers like Internet Explorer.
More Privacy
Because I stripped away a lot of external code libraries, there should be more privacy when browsing this site. There are still cookies and trackers that are unavoidable when using services like YouTube players, Disqus commenting, and things like that, but I have removed social media sharing buttons and Google Analytics entirely and, where possible, used the most secure privacy settings available. For instance, all contact form submissions now auto-expire personal data after 180 days.
Stronger Foundation Moving Forward
Not only was the site brought up to modern standards, but it was also designed to be more extensible and flexible for the future. That means that I can add features or parts to the site that will improve the reading experience without it being such a big lift (because this was the big lift).
Experimenting with Advertisements
This site was never engineered to make me rich, but it does have significant costs to host it on quality servers. So, to offset those costs, I’m experimenting with running advertisements. You may see them on some visits and you may not depending on whether it’s “worth it.” I’m also going to experiment with things like Patreon and paywalled content to see how we can find a balance between making the articles on this site accessible while making it sustainable for me to devote time and resources to it.
Legacy Pocket Guides are Free
Lastly, the Digital Cinema Pocket Guides, which have been a staple of this site for years are now completely free. They had not been updated in a long time and, even before this, I stopped charging for them. It’s official now: you can have them for free if you still find a use for them. They were very useful to me (and many others) for their time, but the pace of camera software updates as well as their mostly handcrafted nature, made them near impossible to keep current.
I do sincerely appreciate anyone who purchased them. I hope you found value in them.
Plus, you helped support this site! Almost all of the money made off of those guides has been used to pay for servers, mailing lists, etc. that keep The Black and Blue alive right here and right now at a time when so many other blogs and websites simply turn off the lights as they are abandoned.
A New Chapter for The Black and Blue
I’m hopeful that all of these changes are the beginning of a return to form for The Black and Blue. In all the years I’ve left this site unattended, there hasn’t been much content to fill its place. I still treasure it as a unique corner of the internet that I hope you will continue to support.
Let me know in the comments what you would like to see covered moving forward.
And thank you to you, amazing reader!
For a full list of changes, you can read the site’s changelog here.
