[Meta] 2018 Update

It’s been almost exactly two years since I left Blogger for WordPress, and I haven’t looked back since. This month, I’m excited to announce the first major update to Arnon on Technology since its 2016 reboot.

Ancient History

I’ve been writing about technology on and off since 2012, when I set up a simple blog on Blogger. After discovering that my chosen URL of technology.blogspot.com had been taken, I settled on the name “Technology by AE” and immediately published a rant about the new tab bar layout in Safari 6.

In the years that followed, my blog went through several major iterations. I posted extensively throughout 2013 and 2014 and refined my original electric green Blogger theme. In fact, the header image for this post is the original background image from 2012. However, by 2015, I had become tired of Blogger’s limitations, and was struggling to find time to write and post articles.

Finally, I manually migrated all my old posts to a fresh WordPress blog. Google had recently released its new design language, Material Design, and I built a Material Design-inspired WordPress theme to accompany the new site. “Technology by AE” became simply “Blog – Arnon Erba”, and it entered life as a sub-page under my own personal website.

Over the next few years, I worked on refining the content I posted. I launched the Server Logs Explained series and wrote some exhaustive posts about specific computer problems I had faced and how I fixed them. I rolled out HTTPS and worked on optimizing the layout and design for speed and accessibility. Still, the site felt like it was still hiding in the shadows, not quite used to its full potential.

What’s New

The first major change was to choose a real name for my blog, something I should have done from the start. In keeping with some of my favorite industry blogs — Joel on Software, Krebs on Security, and of course SwiftOnSecurity — I am excited to finally call this site Arnon on Technology. No more esoteric or ambiguous page titles.

I’ve made a lot of other changes, some obvious and some less so. I fixed some issues with the <h1>-<h6> header tags, making the site more accessible and more easily discoverable by search engines. I’ve continued to make some backend optimizations, and have made the site fully accessible via IPv6. But mainly, I’ve substantially changed the design once again.

Ever since rolling out my original Material Design theme (dark grey text on a white background), I’ve always wanted to try a light-on-dark variant. This theme is the realization of that dream, and is reminiscent of my original eye-searing Blogger theme. Personally, I like the new theme, and it comes with a wide variety of subtle improvements, especially for mobile devices. Hey, if Ars Technica can still offer a dark theme…

Looking Forward

My goal has always been to post useful or entertaining content — ideally both. I hope I’ve achieved that goal, at least occasionally, and I have a reasonably large stock of drafts stored up that I’m hoping to finish and post in the coming months. At any rate, it seems like two years is the average life of my site-wide redesigns, so we’ll see what the future holds.