Bleh. Lot to discuss.

Site Issues

Beware of Troubleshooting

As far as I know, this problem isn’t visible on the client end (you), but that hasn’t stopped it from being a nightmare for me. I mentioned last week that I was making steady progress on SEO and indexing, which entails dozens of edits in a short timespan.

For reasons yet unclear, I’ll occasionally run into catastrophically bad load times. I can’t seem to find a pattern as to when it happens. I’d guess it has to do with heavy page-editing activity, but that could just be because I’m loading more pages, therefore creating more opportunities for this behavior to arise. When I say “long load times,” I’m talking, like, five minutes of a white screen. It’s bad. Huge blow to productivity.

My host has been helpfully offering advice, but so far, I keep returning to the stage where I disable plugins and reenable until I spot the culprit. Of course, that’s assuming it is a plugin issue. As I write this, I’m running a minimal number of plugins needed for important site functionality, and the site appears stable. Fingers crossed that it’s a plugin of little consequence to replace.

That said, if the site experience is ever compromised, I might be actively fooling with plugins. For example, one of my plugins allows for my category pages to display my entire library of work. Otherwise, it’d separated into dozens of numbered pages. If I disable that, the code goes with it, and my category pages will show only a small offering of my stuff in an arbitrary order. If anything seems funky, it’s probably something like that. Thank you for being patient in those cases. My table of contents..es (?) are also disabled right now, etc.

By the time you’re reading this post, everything may be up to speed again (literally).

Less Reliance on Plugins: Dangerous Thinking for an Idiot

It really does suck to be at the mercy of plugins. Even putting aside the potential for conflicts as their coding trips over one another, being limited by their functionalities is a constant frustration. If WordPress natively had more basic tools, this might not be a problem, but you’d be shocked at how little customization is built into the platform.

Another problem with plugins is the bloat. Nothing’s reliably lightweight. The best-rated plugins are as likely as anything else to have extraneous features that increase site load, but it’s attached to you like a ball-and-chain because you like just one thing about the plugin.

I really wish I knew more about coding architecture. How great would it be to be able to do exactly what you want on your own terms? One of the plugins I removed handled my social media share buttons at the bottom of pages. It would be wonderful if I could just go into my page template, write some isolated code, and just… have share buttons that work forever because nothing about the code intersects with other shit.

I keep telling myself I’ll figure this shit out sometime, but I have my hands so full already.

Projects

Q4 2025 – Q1 2026

La Pucelle Update

While desperately trying to get my page for La Pucelle indexed, I took the time to add a new section discussing its enhanced port, Ragnarok. It was written off-the-cuff, so don’t expect something super high-quality. I’m praying I didn’t misremember things, frankly. My gambit worked, though: the page was indexed after adding that section.

New Review

I have a new review drafted up that hasn’t been discussed lately. It’s nothing major; just a small game I happened to complete and felt obligated to cover. The review is pretty much done. Like, for real. I can’t think of what else I want to write about. I just need to upload some screenshots. I also wanted my share buttons to be back up by the time I published it, for obvious reasons. It’s almost certain this will be the next thing to release.

Old Review + Working With Old School Gamer Magazine

Last week I mentioned a different review that was nearing completion. This one is of a much grander scale. I met with my “boss” at OSGM and pitched it to him. He was receptive, so I’ll probably repurpose what I have for them. This will delay its release, but it’ll provide me money I need to live. So… y’know. I’ll make it clear when my stuff’s been published on other platforms, so have no worries about missing anything.

A few other topics came up during our talk, and they’re going to keep me busy for a while. I should be in OSGM’s January 2026 issue. I don’t want to give away any details about the project, but I’ll probably have around 1500 words of material. Again, more details later. This has been in the pipeline for a while, so it’s not new info.

O2 2026

Book

I think I’ve also mentioned before that I’ll be contributing to a gaming book. Nothing huge. I’m being roped into a fun little project, and it’s a cool opportunity to broaden my skill set. I’m hoping to be taken on as an editor for the entire thing. We’ll see how that goes. The book should be out in Q2 2026, so more details as we approach that timeframe.

Interview

I’ve had one of my first successful grassroots projects take off! I came across a company in the game industry and reached out to them requesting an interview. They agreed to it! The interview hasn’t been conducted yet, and the feature is also most likely to be published in Q2 2026. Yet again, another fantastic opportunity to attempt new writing formats. My first interview! This company is doing something I really respect on a personal level, so I’m excited to bring them more exposure.

Project Timeline

I’m writing this half for myself… I’m not used to having so many things planned at once. Not since college, at least. I’m expecting to suddenly remember other things I had planned, in which case, I’ll return to this timeline and add them.

Q4 2025

• 1+ New Video Game Review. 1 finished, 1 near completion, and whatever else might strike my fancy before the year’s out.

Q1 2026

• Old School Gamer Magazine contribution. Should total to the length of one standard article, so roughly 1500 words.

Q2 2026

• Interview + corresponding article.
• Book contributions published.

Gotta Blast!!!

Relatively brief post this week. I want to get back to site upkeep. I’m nearing the end of Super Robot Wars X, and I got the Diabellstar Mate in Master Duel, which is very important. I’m looking forward to sharing even more site and professional progress next week. Thank you for your patience!