Inspiration

Much of the inspiration behind this site came from reading John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, the second-most read book in history after the Bible. I’d like to say I read Bunyan’s allegory in the original 1676-8 English, but I have to admit not being up to the task at the time. Instead, I read a 1998 paraphrase.

Boring Technical Background

Standards and Accessibility

As much as possible, I have tried to make the site standards-compliant, with valid XHTML and CSS. I am also trying to make the site as accessible as possible.

Browsers

WaywardWretch.com has been tested on Firefox, Internet Explorer 6, and Opera 7, all on Windows.

I’ve also tested the site on Internet Explorer on Pocket PC 2003, and it looks like I’ve got some tweaking to do for better usability on that browser.

Not having ready access to a Macintosh, I have only seen the site once on Safari on Mac OS X.

I have not yet had the time to try viewing the site on any Linux browsers.

Typography

The site title at the top and side navigation headings use Mayflower, a historically-based font designed by Ted Staunton. According to Sherwood Type, “Mayflower is classical Roman font taken from a Bible of 1610, the edition likely carried to America by the pilgrims on the Mayflower.” Hmm… Bible. 1600s. Pilgrims. How could I not use the font?

Mayflower is available from P22 Typefoundry. It is also available from MyFonts.com, where I first found it.

All body text uses Georgia, a serif font designed by Matthew Carter for on-screen viewing. The font is available on most Windows and Macintosh computers. If not available on your system, your browser should fall back, in order, to Utopia (a Georgia approximation for Linux), Times New Roman, Times, and as a last resort, your browser’s default serif font.

Trebuchet MS is a sans-serif font used where space is tight and readability is important, such as the search edit box and category browse drop-down list. Trebuchet MS was designed by Vincent Connare with that goal in mind. Like Georgia, Trebuchet MS is available on most Windows and Macintosh computers. If not, the fall-backs are Arial, Helvetica, and your browser’s default sans-serif font.

Georgia and Trebuchet MS used to be available as free downloads on Microsoft’s typography site. But, that is apparently no longer the case, perhaps due to the font being included with Windows 2000/XP and Mac OS X, as well as a number of Microsoft applications.

Graphics and Code Editors

Generally, all graphics were created using Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9. Jasc was recently acquired by Corel Corporation, and by now there should be some version of Corel Paint Shop Pro available.

UltraEdit is generally my tool of choice when it comes to editing web code, and even just plain text. Incidentally, I have to admit that one of the reasons I started using UltraEdit some time ago was because of the story of the man and company behind the product.

Publishing Engine

Textpattern is the “publishing engine” behind WaywardWretch.com, but it didn’t start out that way…

The original WaywardWretch.com was a collection of HTML and CSS files developed using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. (Macromedia was recently acquired by Adobe.) My Paint Shop Pro-created image files were also part of the mix.

As I added content, the day I realized content-wrangling in static HTML files was going to be too much work came much sooner than expected. So, I started building my CMS in PHP. That was fun for awhile, and I learned a lot. But so many features, so little time.

So the search for something more ready-made. opensourceCMS.com” was a huge help. After some playing around with various demos, I settled on WordPress. It has a good feature set, a strong community of support, and is easy to use. Also, adapting my site design to WordPress was fairly easy.

Just before the relaunch, an e-mail conversation with a friend led me to reconsider Textpattern. Like WordPress, Textpattern has a good feature set, a strong community of support, and is also easy to use. For some reason the fit seemed better than before, and I decided to make the switch. Again, adapting my site design to Textpattern was fairly easy.

After comparing the nearly-live WordPress and Textpattern versions of the new WaywardWretch.com, for me Textpattern turned out to be the better choice. If you are considering a site of your own, these are the two I recommend you check out first.