I looked at 3 plugins to add ASCII art to your WordPress blog. This, Kilroy was here, is the first one I loaded up and experimented with. It does work but may not be the results you wanted.

There are no options to add the ASCII art to the bottom of your posts or pages. The plugin does place ASCII art at the very bottom of my site, under the footer. Below is my first experiment. I was pretty neutral with the results. But, I’m a bit traditional when it comes to the font I use. The spacing was out, the lines between text. Also, the top line of my art was pushed to the left.

I tried another ASCII, thinking a longer image would look better either way.

Adding HTML code worked to keep the formatting but, it shows up on the site.

Still it is nice to have a little surprise for anyone who reads to the end. So I will keep this plugin and see how often I remember to change out the ASCII art images.

I open Notepad (on a Windows PC) and start working on an idea. It’s like a puzzle to fit the characters together in a way that creates an image.

Some inspiration comes from searching for images or those I find. I look for clean lines so it will be easier to adjust when I need to figure out the spaces, characters, slopes for lines, and so on.

The font you work with makes a difference. Notepad uses FixedSys (or one of the newer offshoots). I seldom like how ASCII art looks when it is shown in another font. Courier and others use a thinner line which makes the ASCII art seem washed out. Plus, even though they are monospaced, the lines in columns don’t match up exactly the same.

I know some people would make a pattern or sketch and tape it to their monitor. So the ASCII art would be like filling in the lines (connecting the dots). I’ve never done that. Most often I have a general idea and add some characters, sit back a bit and see how things are shaping up as I go along.

Don’t delete a bunch of stuff and start over too often. Sometimes just adding a bit of detail will pull the whole image together. Circles and curves are one of the hardest things to work with, especially if you make a smaller ASCII art image. Close lines, like trying to make fingers for a hand, are pretty much impossible unless you make a bigger image or settle for a hand with just three fingers. I avoid hands and just have people holding things. This works well cause it adds more details to the image and explains what it was meant to be.

I don’t use any alt characters. ASCII isn’t about anything but the standard keyboard characters. You can do a lot with lines and dashes but I find a way to use numbers and letters too. It seems a bit bare without them.

• via my post to Quora – What is the process of making ASCII art?

I haven't updated my own photos to my Flickr account (or the groups I started there) since 2013. I feel guilty, sort of. Mostly I think I just ran out of steam. I have still been taking photos. Getting them up online was a routine for awhile and then I got behind and more behind and then drastically behind.

I still moderate at Flickr. I don't login as often as I used to but I'm keeping the groups going. I like to see the new photos come in and (for the groups which I moderate for someone else) new photos can't get posted without moderator approval. On my own groups I didn't set them up that way. But, this means I have to have faith in people to post relevant photos. I've been really lucky or fortunate. I seldom need to moderate my groups for Ontario or Canadian explorers. Now and then someone posts a road trip photo, not understanding the idea of urban and rural exploration versus a road trip.

Anyway, I am merging older posts from my personal blog into this one so my older exploring and photos will be here, soon. I've started adding some but the old blog is a disorganized mess. It has been around since before the days of categories and tags. I've found posts which don't have anything, not a title even. So, it is taking time to sort out the madness.

The nice thing about doing this is finding places I had forgotten about. I only hope all the photos will come along nice and easy as I move the posts over. At least it is another WordPress blog so it shouldn't have a conflict that way.

Wish me luck!

I want to create a site which will be more than a WordPress blog or a site running with the limits of WordPress themes and plugins. I looked at Drupal and others but decided Joomla seems the most user friendly, with community support and enough extra features for me to have the site I want to build. Joomla is open source.

WordPress is still great for a site which is intended as a blog. But, I want to evolve. For years I have wanted to build my own web directory and create a site which will let me have a calendar of annual holidays and events which I can also use to distribute egreeting cards with my ASCII art. I have been trying to do this with various WordPress themes, plugins and just using WordPress as it is. It's not working. WordPress is great at what it can do, but there are still limits to WordPress if you want more content than an online journal or basic website.

I had a plan for my site when I was running WordPress but I kept bumping into roadblocks where WordPress just was not enough. I'd download one plugin and another theme and have them break, lack support or just be a drain on my bank account without giving me the results I wanted. So, off to explore new territory: Joomla.

Joomla Installed Easily

I loaded Joomla onto my web domain and now I am teaching myself how to get my site off the ground again. I like learning new things. But, I admit, I'm not learning as easily and quickly as I would have done when I was still 30-something. But, I want to do this. Another exploration for Laura the Explorer.

Installing Joomla was straight forward enough. You can install it from your web host, an automatic install which just needs you to type in a name for the new database you are creating. You need to know your web host information for the domain. This is the same information you would need for installing WordPress. So, if you have done that before you won't find Joomla a challenge to install.

I do find both Joomla and WordPress could have a more user friendly guide for the installation. Someone who is completely new to setting up a site will not have enough basic information to make the install go as smoothly as it could. I'm not saying the install is a complicated process, it will just seem that way to someone who has no experience at all.

Joomla Builds Websites, Forums, Portals and Blogs Too

I have found modules and extensions which I am learning to work with on my Joomla site. As a bonus, my sister runs her business site on Joomla so I will be able to help her from time to time too.

I'd write more about what I'm doing but I am just working in the background on my site, in the admin section. I'm taking my time and deciding which Joomla theme I want to start with now that I'm not blogging. It's all different when you step out from the blog.

Because I am fed up with sites which expect me to register for another site, like Disqus, before I can leave a comment I am no longer going to share links to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc for any site which I can not comment on.

I have not been blocked or banned from Disqus. I just do not want to register for an account. For years we have given our email and name to sites in order to comment. That was more than enough. Trusting sites to collect our email addresses and not sell them was much more than enough to ask when I only wanted to comment on a blog post. To ask, or expect more is too much!

Disqus allows guest comments. If the site owner chooses to enable the feature - you can leave a comment without having to login or register with Disqus. So, it is fully the fault of the site owner if people can not comment. The site owner uses Disqus to track people. They want to track everyone so they can't let people comment unless they become a number.

Well no more for me! I deleted my account at Disqus last year when I was fed up.  Now I'm taking it a step farther and putting the blame right on site owners. So, any site which expects me to register in order to comment I will not be forwarding or sharing links on any of my accounts: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Scoop.it and etc.

#NoCommentNoShare