Responsive Design

For the past years I have received steady Google notifications that my personal site wasn’t responsive, i.e. that it would very likely not work properly on mobile devices. Viewport wasn’t set, and text was too small. So today I bit the bullet and looked around to see if there would be any WP plug-ins that might help me with this task (I shuddered to think of what it would require me to do if I opted for a by-hand option). Lo and behold, there was such a plug-in!

I rather quickly found “Mobile Menu – Your WordPress Menu“. The free version offered enough flexibility and, it seemed, mobile compatibility. That was all I needed. After I figured out how to create the content of the potential left and right hamburger menus at the top of the mobile screen (Appearance > Menus, and then adding all WP ‘pages’ to the left one, all categories to the right), and then enabling and choosing those menus in the Mobile Menu Options, I was pretty much set!

So about 16 months after the previous technical change on this site, I think it may now finally be what I want it to be. There will no doubt be some more changes in future.

Anno 1999

It is 20 years ago that I made my first home page. Back then I think it was on the server of a friend (the late Gard Eggesbo Abrahamsen, may he RIP) and I don’t recall there was a fancy domain name. It may have been something like www.scriba.org/karsmakers.

Of course that page was nothing like the current version. In fact it was a few frames with some basic (and probably useless) info about myself. I guess it was a thing you just did once you took out a subscription with an internet provider. I withstood the temptation to add dozens of animated GIFs like some people did, which may in retrospect have been the only positive thing it had going for it. It gradually grew to include some info about my first marriage (sortof a – censored – honeymoon diary) and some semi-professional information. Then my CV got added, and for a while there was a page advertising myself as your go-to person if you wanted English press releases/lyrics checked. I doubt that particular page was ever found by anyone. The Internet Wayback Machine has an old partial (more like ‘butchered’) copy from circa 2001 and and then again after my first divorce (basically the same as before, minus the “Wedding” menu item).

So today marks a historic event for…um…nobody but me, actually. Twenty years of exhibitionism on the web, culminating into the WordPress site you see before you (from February 2012).

Karsmakers.nl!

In December 1999 and January 2000 I registered a couple of “karsmakers” domains: .com, .net and .org. In October 2001 I added the .info one. As I am Dutch, however, I was always keen on getting my own country’s TLD, the .nl version. Unfortunately this was owned by a distant uncle of mine, Theo Karsmakers, who ran a truck bodywork company. In early 2012 that company went into receivership and I noticed the domain languishing unused. After a bit of coaxing I convinced him he should allow me to do something with it, and the ownership transfer was rounded off last Saturday.

This morning I spent migrating the site, setting up redirects for the previous ‘portal’ karsmakers.net site, and lastly migrating the site’s WordPress database. That seems to have worked out fine so now my chauvinist side will be given free reign.

In case you’re a Karsmakers somewhere and you’d like a forwarding email I can set one up for you on…

karsmakers.com
karsmakers.net
karsmakers.org
karsmakers.co
karsmakers.info
karsmakers.nl
karsmakers.uk
karsmakers.eu
karsmakers.world
karsmakers.online
karsmakers.tm
karsmakers.no
rsmakers.nl (for email.k@rsmakers.nl)
rsmake.rs (for email.k@rsmake.rs)
kars.nl
karsemaker.nl
karsemakers.nl
karsmaker.nl

As this will only be an email forwarding thing, your mail will still be as private as it was before, and won’t be stored anywhere other than where you have it stored now. It will cost € 10 per year for your first domain, € 5 for every extra domain. If you’re interested in fully hosted POP mail accounts, that can be arranged too. I can be contacted using the “Contact” link in the upper right (upper left on mobile devices) menu.

(This post was last updated on 4 December 2022)