I have spent some time today converting the WordPress theme that I use for this blog, the excellent Grid Focus by Derek Punsulan, into HTML5. As of today, this blog is now HTML5 compliant.

It’s the first time I’ve delved into the world of WordPress theming, and I was pleasantly surprised how simple it is. Next step is to create my own from scratch, but I am looking forward to that.

Unfortunately one of the plugins that I use, SocioFluid generates invalid code, using deprecated elements and attributes. So this part doesn’t validate at all. I must look into an alternative. If you have any in mind, please let me know.

I’ve also converted my Decimal to Roman Numerals script into PHP for use in the copyright date in the footer.

I created a word cloud of my blog entries over at Wordle. It’s interesting to see what words are mentioned most often! A link to the full word cloud is shown below.

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I have made a few changes to iandevlin.com, adding a new services section to indicate that I am now also available for hire to do freelance web design and development work.

I do work full-time so my availability might be limited, but it’s best to contact me first to check my workload. But please do get in touch.

A brief list of the web development skills I can offer:

• XHTML
• HTML5
• CSS
• JavaScript
• jQuery and MooTools
• ASP.NET: C# and VB.NET
• Object Oriented PHP
• MySQL
• SQLServer 2005
• IIS
• Apache

When I redesigned iandevlin.com as a business-card style website, I was a bit lazy when it came to the contact form. Other than making it snazzily slide down when the @ symbol graphic is clicked on, I didn’t do much else with it, leaving it the way it was – using a CGI script to send the email (I know! Seriously!)

I always had the intention of changing it but never actually got around to doing it for various reasons that range from just not being bothered to being lazy. But after reading a form of madness over at Dive Into HTML5, I decided that the time had come to actually get on with it, and to make use some of the new elements within html5. And so I have.

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I’ve made a few tweaks and configurations to this blog site, as you can no doubt see. The main change is the expanded navigation, with the inclusion of a contact form and a resources for web developers page, which will be added to when I find something worthwhile.

I’ve also made a colour change to iandevlin.com, changing the background colour from grey to white in order to fit with the look of this blog.

Feel free to let me know what you think!

I know this blog hasn’t been up for long, but I had already begun to dislike the previous theme (Scrapbook) as I felt there was too much wasted space at the top causing users to have to scroll down to read any content. I know that in this day and age most people have larger screens and higher resolutions, but still.

Anyway, this morning whilst updating WordPress to the latest version, 2.8.5, I also decided to look for another theme and came across Grid Focus by Derek Punsalan at 5THIRTYONE. I liked the clean, content focused layout and after installing it, was amazed at the flexibility of the widgets that can be used, so I’m sure it’ll be here to stay, at least for a while!

Let me know what you think?