¶ The dunlevy.org domain name is registered via Gandi.net, and this site is hosted at GreenGeeks, where pages are served by LiteSpeed Web Server. ¶ Work on the site began on Saturday, April 26, 2003, in Chicago, Illinois, USA, and—no site ever being finished—work remains ongoing and is now done primarily in Berwyn, Illinois.
¶ In its current technical form and general structure since August 2023, the site comprises two parts:
¶ Body text and headings across both parts of the site are set in the Alegreya and Alegreya Sans typefaces, which were designed by Juan Pablo del Peral for Huerta Tipográfica, and are implemented here with Google Fonts. Used along with the text fonts on some pages are Fork Awesome icons.
¶ Clean, standards-compliant HTML and valid CSS are always top priorities. Pages are validated against the W3C Markup Validation Service, W3C CSS Validation Service, Schema Markup Validator, and Google Rich Results Test following significant edits or other relevant changes. My standard of quality is full validation for the main site, where I have complete control, and as close as possible to full validation for the blog, where I don’t have that same level control. Because speed is important to user experience, pages are also periodically checked against PageSpeed Insights. ¶ Other tools used for site analysis and quality assurance purposes include the Website Grader from HubSpot Tools; Ahrefs Site Explorer and Site Audit, as well as their SEO Toolbar for the Google Chrome Browser; the SEMrush SEO Toolkit; the SEOquake toolbar for Chrome; and various built-in Chrome DevTools (Developer Tools), including Network, Performance, Performance insights, and Lighthouse. ¶ WebSniffer sometimes comes in handy as a no-nonsense and clear way of looking at HTTP(S) request and response headers, including for troubleshooting redirects and related issues. ¶ The text-based Lynx web browser is sometimes useful for confidence checks of content especially on more complex pages; it can be installed on macOS with the Homebrew package manager. ¶ When making color design changes, I check pages against the Color Contrast Accessibility Validator. The accessiBe accessScan is a good free checker for general accessibility standards compliance. I have used Siteimprove’s Website Checker in that regard as well.
¶ Web traffic is monitored using Google Analytics, implemented by means of a Google Tag within Google Tag Manager. Additionally, Google Search Console is connected to Google Analytics and is used, both together with Analytics and separately, to monitor web traffic acquisition from and presence within Google Search, as well as to confirm Mobile Usability. ¶ Microsoft Bing Webmaster Tools is similarly used to monitor presence within the Bing search ecosystem. ¶ See Google’s Privacy Policy and Microsoft’s Privacy Statement.
¶ The main site has been designed and built using the Bulma CSS framework. Content and code—PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Apache configuration files, XML sitemaps, &c.—have been artisanally hand-edited the old-fashioned way, primarily in the BBEdit and GNU nano text editors. ¶ The contact page uses a free embedded “contact us” form from HubSpot. ¶ The separate Site search page is built with Google Programmable Search. ¶ Cyberduck is the main client program used for transferring files over SFTP for publication.
¶ The in lieu, faux blog part of this site has been designed and built using WordPress running the GeneratePress theme.
¶ The plugins in use, all free, are:
¶ From 2012 to August 2023, the blog was hosted on Tumblr at a custom domain that was a subdomain of dunlevy.org. The Tumblr Importer plugin was used to handle the migration of old posts from Tumblr to WordPress. Some posts, particularly old link, image, and video posts, did not come across too well; if you come across older posts that are missing titles, have comically small images or videos or other problems, that is mostly likely the reason. I am manually fixing these posts as I come across them, but I have not been actively going through the archives to find and fix these problems. Old Tumblr URLs should all be pointing to the new WordPress post URLs via 301 redirects, including using the aforementioned Redirection WordPress plugin.
¶ Before Tumblr, I was using the Publish2 platform [link to Wayback Machine on archive.org snapshot from 2008] to publish a feed of links “in lieu of a blog”—whence the tumblog title “in lieu, faux blog” now carried over to the current WordPress blog, a part-pun half-joke having to do for some reason with faux bois. (I’m sorry.)
¶ Certain links on this site may be to affiliate websites and we may receive affiliate commissions for any purchases made subsequent to clicks on any such affiliate links. ¶ My editorial policy is not to use such links solely for the purpose of generating commissions, but rather to use such links where available in some cases where I would already have been linking to a given URL whether or not an affiliate linking option had been available. Examples would be when linking to products, services, tools, or providers I use or recommend and write about in that context. ¶ This site does not accept paid posts or posts by guest authors. Everything on this site is written and edited by me, John Dunlevy, the site owner and publisher.