Breaking the Rules

As you probably can tell we did a uplift to Xanluna! The last time we did a major update we transitioned to the 960 grid system. Showcasing a variety of template designs and possible variations. Now we are in some ways breaking the rules by jumping back. What I mean is we are now using an older theme that has not been converted to the new format.

Sometime older is better and in this case it allows us to make modifications we could not make otherwise. Don’t get me wrong as I am not suggesting the 960 grid system does not work because it does. We proved it!

Keeping current on the web these days is tough. With all the new bells and whistles out there and all this web 2.0 stuff. Trying to integrate with social web services is much of the issue as anything. Twitter for example has been giving us fits and in as much as I would like to continue offering the services here on Xanluna! we have come to the conclusion the effort to debug it is more pain then effort. So for now our Twitter connections will still operate, but we will not be updating any of the extensions that support it!

Same goes with Facebook. In fact I am contemplating dropping Facebook completely. I don’t really use the service. It is enough to keep Xanluna! fresh. I also have some real issues with privacy on Facebook.

I have read a number of articles of late that say we all need a web presence and I think my involvement here is enough. Trust me I get a enough junk mail now so I don’t need any more.

For those who really desire a personal home page or want a web presence I would recommend flavors.me. Or as we posted a new article on .ME you might like to get your own .ME domain. But I digress.

Clearly the 960 Grid system has benefit and one day web 2.0 will allow us to fully utilize it as standard. What is issue is speed and having to add extra caching processes adds undo overhead. Remember my blog post on living in the hotel that offered blazing broadband at 256kb?

This little adventure got me thinking about all those people still out there on the web that are still using dialup and have speeds far less. Xanluna! page loads at 256kb were really really hard to swallow. It was so fast I could not even begin to update the site even if I wanted too.

Now this does not mean a 960 Grid site cannot be fast. It can but it requires a lot of stripping to gain speed without some sort of caching mechanism. So we decided until we can find a base template built on 960 format that has these issues addressed we would continue to utilize tried and true.

I know the guys over at Rocket Theme are working hard to work out the kinks in 960 and eventually will have this caching thing resolved. For now we will go forward with an old but goodie.