So as of late, I’ve been taking some classes and wrapping up things to learn some more web design stuff, mostly video editing related skills in order to improve the SFG Youtube channel. But as a result, I’ve also been able to work more with WordPress and CSS in general, and after some digging I think I’ve found a pretty serviceable theme until I’m able to upgrade to WP Premium, which I actually do plan on doing in the near future. This will allow me to customize the site more to my own standards using the coding knowledge I’ve gotten, instead of just sticking with base themes and tweaking what I can get.

So what’s new?

Well, I decided to ditch the old Apostrophe themes as I felt upon some further inspection and by looking at the site’s stats that the theme I had before made the site look… a bit basic. The reviews were just icons and newcomers wouldn’t know what exactly I even did. So, I picked a handy theme that lets me display the little post previews I make for each article, and thus I have the new layout. This should help engross newcomers to the articles a lot more since I see some people who visit the homepage but stop short of reading stuff. I also notice some who come whenever a game I covered goes on sale or gets a special edition, so that’s nifty, and I want you guys to stick around and read my thoughts.

I’ve also edited the header and removed/tweaked the wording of the extra pages. The “Reviews in progress” tab was erased since I didn’t want update it much and I end up posting major site updates via posts like these, and I tweaked the wording of two other pages to make them more streamlined. No big word soups this time!

I even got my sidebar to look MUCH better thanks to the improved widget functions of WordPress, although the Patreon link has no icon as WP only supports it with plugins.(Which, despite having control of for a private project, I don’t have control of it here, so I’ll have to get Business in order to do that.) Everything else I wanted though shows up perfectly fine here, but if there’s any feedback, please give me it so I can do my best to tweak accordingly.

By far the biggest challenge with this new theme and tweaking the site around it was a limited choice of a color palette. Since I cannot use CSS without the actual business plan, (despite knowing enough to code a change myself) I had to pick from some custom options. I was REALLY eager to try this gray background to prevent this site from melting the eyes of night-time people… But it also makes all my headings pink, which isn’t what Seafoam is at all. Thus, I had to choose between a Dark theme with Orange headings, or a white with Green. (which works well for the Seafoam aspect) If it were up to me, i’d make it a gray theme with the Seafoam heading, but again, I’ll have to work towards getting my business plan in order to do that.

After I graduate college in the near future I plan on working at a job in order to save up for a two year plan, as this is what my true passion and hobby is. I may love making videos and I may have a more personal side I toy around with, but this is my true calling and I love every single moment of writing reviews. The support I gain is incredible and I really do admire all the folks who share my reviews on Reddit or Twitter, and for those who give me feedback on my writing. We usually hit around 1K views a month, which is incredible considering how few I got on the ancient forums.

In fact, they’re so old that they outright died. Tapatalk bought out Freeforums a few years back and ran it into the ground, and since I fully moved to WordPress, I had little reason to go back to the old site outside of maybe for my future retrospectives. You can see the most recent archive here, which pretty much shows what it was like before the tapatalk buyout. Trust me when I say that you really missed nothing from the old forums being turned into a generic design. I probably should nab pics of the old site before Tapatalk finds someway to kill the archive, too, but it’s gone.

While all my reviews were backed up and moved to this very site, the reviews of some of my peers that have long since moved on with their lives have not, though I kinda do want to reconnect with my friend Amanda, AKA Luna1997. Without her and I forgiving each other for dumb things we did back on Animal Crossing Community that led to three of our attempts at making a website failing, I wouldn’t be here writing today, nor would I even think of the idea of writing a review. (despite my pre 2014 reviews being TERRRRIIIIIBBBLLLLE) 

So wherever you are, I thank you, along with Justin, Percy, and Cubix, the old crew from the PokemonBattleZone days. Same goes for Eric Warpjump, who pushed me to make the jump to WordPress, and to ThePrincelyPegasus, who I commissioned to make my website avatar that I’ve used for a long while. I might commission a new icon or banner soon, or make my own, but for now I’m content with this great one.

General Life Updates

I kept this a secret from this site itself, but not on my Youtube, Patreon or Twitter. Basically this summer has gone to hell due to my grandfather having a health scare. His cancer had returned to the lymph nodes, and invaded his whole body. He was nearing 80, and was told he’d have limited time left. He was an amazing man who despite his anti-internet mindset, helped me so much in my life, both saving me from a rough period of it and by giving me great advice for my old site and general courtesy.

Despite all our best efforts, we failed to save him, and on August 8th 2019 he passed at the age of 79. I was working on tight schedules I imposed on myself already, mostly due to worrying about him and my other projects, but my paranoia of losing someone so close to me who was around every day had been realized, and it absolutely broke me. I already mentioned the loss of a bestie in the last update, but this hurt in another way. While it was expected this time, it only made me more paranoid about myself getting cancer, or my grandmother from her excessive smoking habits.

My phobia of death that I’ve mentioned in Eternal Memories has been the final boss of my life every since some near death experiences as a child, and I just can’t afford to lose anyone else. I desire living seventy more years at least, and I’ve been trying to improve my physical and mental health to accomplish that. But unfortunately, despite me trying to push forward as usual hoping nobody would notice, it was hard not to tell peers and my twitter gang about what was going on, and my summer schedule from July-September makes it obvious that I’ve been in a slump.

Now with College underway, I don’t know if I’ll get back to five reviews per week,(Especially with my backlog, though thankfully I haven’t added too much more to it and I’ve been getting a lot of reviews worked on at once now) but I really would like to. At the very least, the youtube has been more active since I’m in a editing mood, and so I think things may pick up from here. My empty hole in my heart might never get refilled, but I’ll keep on working to be the courteous person my grandfather always wanted me to be, since that’s why I always take a hard action to stop any sort of harassment towards my peers.  There’s no such thing as immortality and there might not even be an afterlife, but those fears of going into an empty void or the entire universe being a dream that I have frequently won’t stop me from working hard, for my burning passion!

So, let’s continue the journey together. I’m going to aim to be less of a nervous wreck too, and try and get interviews with as many developers as I can. I’ve still not abandoned my desire to give the smaller indies the feedback they need, despite me shifting more focus towards bigger releases, so hopefully something good will happen!