The 2022 End of Year Website Update
Teacher,
Cat enthusiast
- The 2022 End of Year Website Update - 01/01/2023
- Celebrating Ada Lovelace day - 10/10/2022
- Website update 5/9/22 - 05/09/2022
As 2022 draws to a close, it’s time to take a reflective look back at the year and summarise what’s gone on with the website and talk about our WWW and EBI’s.
As part of these musings, I may also discuss the future plans for the website going into 2023.
2022 has certainly been a rollercoaster for myself and to be fair, this has probably reflected in the updates to the site which have been sporadic to say the least. This has been due to the changes in my personal circumstances.
In September 2021, I began a Master’s which gave me more free time to concentrate on the website. Going into 2022, you might have been able to see the increased input and changes going on. This was a fantastic opportunity to really push the website and get into building it out to how I originally imagined it.
In May 2022, the formal teaching part of the Master’s course came to an end and I then began to concentrate on my final project as well as picking up a temporary teaching job to refill my coffers (education is expensive and student loans really don’t cover it!). This did give me some time to again work on the site, and in this time the site theme was changed (which was a rather big job) and also the courses section was changed over to a new provider which included manually copying everything over.
The site also moved across to a faster and more stable website hosting package as there had been a number of issues with the site getting swamped due its increasing popularity.
We’ve definitely noticed an uptick in visits this year which is great and as part of the upgrades we’ve been working on optimising and increasing the SEO of the site in the background so that more people can find it and have a great experience on the website.
I also managed to gain full time employment again in June which was fantastic and is at an excellent company that I really enjoy.
Things were going well until a very close member of the family unexpectedly passed away in August ?. Not content with just this, another family member became seriously ill and this unfortunately left me with no time for sorting out the website from about September. There have been little tweaks here and there but nothing major.
Thankfully the family member who was ill is now on the mend, I was awarded my Master’s (with distinction) and things are slowly but surely coming into some form of ‘new normal’ where I have the opportunity to sit down and dedicate some time to the website again.
Today for example, I took some time to add Breadcrumbs back into the site to make navigation easier now that they have been fixed by the site theme owner. This has also meant updating some pages with correct links.
I also managed to fix a few buttons that were appearing as the wrong colour which when a user hovered over them, made the text disappear.
So things are getting slightly better, but what’s the plan for 2023?
2023
2023 is shaping up to be another ‘interesting’ year. I’ve certainly got lots on my plate already (full time teaching job, studying for more awards etc) but my aim is to really try and set time aside to put into the website and improve things.
As with many of you, there are worries about the increasing cost of living and this is certainly something that I and my family are currently battling with and putting measures in place to combat over 2023. As I’ve mentioned before, the website moved over to new hosting this year which has significantly increased the monthly cost. The site definitely needed it to deal with the increase in popularity, and it goes without saying that if you can make a donation it would be much appreciated!
A while ago, I made a list of things that I wanted to add to the site and 2023 will be about going through this list, adding to the content on the website and making things better. It’s a big list but with some grit and determination, I’m sure that I can get through it.
So happy new year to all, I wish you a fantastic 2023 and hope that we can all learn, grow and improve together.