May 8th, 2026

The web world moves fast, but occasionally, you find a set of web tools that just works so perfectly together that you want to use them for every project you have. I was a big fan of DoneJS by Bitovi, as they basically put together a kit of build, testing, documentation and "hot loading" components. Unfortunately, they've given up the "JS library wars" and even their own developers are using React these days. I hung on for a while, but the more I tried to do with DoneJS, the less it worked. The support just ran out, the libraries were out of date, and it became more tedious to try to keep working in it then to just move on.

So, move on I did. It took a few tries to really get a combination I liked, but now I am FLYING through creating websites that are fast, accessible, pass Google Page Speed tools at 95-100 points per category, have JSON+LD output for Social Media and Search Engines, a CMS for easy non-developer level author editing, and most of all a clean, auto-reloading developer environment.

That's this combination:

And one of the most useful things: CSS based theming while being able to reuse 99% of the code and 100% of the CMS data. Go ahead, try the "Theme" menu on the left. Switch between "Rocket" and "Atlas" and enjoy the seamless transition that will stick with you from page to page, and even on page revisits. We've seen this before for years now. Wordpress, PHPBB, Drupal and others, but frankly those are outdated bulky code messes with a wild amount of config files and I'm way over it. This version of CSS theming is home grown by Flippydisk Networks.

I've been using this combination for a few projects now, so I decided to make a "skeleton" of all those tools, so I could clone it and start with all of that in place when a new project came about. Now, I'm making it available to you as well, on my public organization's github:

the NextJS + Contenful starter kit, by Flippydisk Networks

This site you're looking at right now is using it! Clone it, start your own project, make it either local pages or use the Contentful setup instructions, it all just works. Enjoy!

-- Jim O'Harra-Sutton

March 15, 2012

The Flippy has us, once more. I'd like to first take a moment to shed a tear and say that just yesterdayI retired the original server that started this domain, all it's game servers & websites, and frankly my continued interest in coding which lead to a successful career thus far. He was a dual Pentium 3 (back when it was actually 2 physical processors [gasp!]), 933Mhz machine of which the site and game servers used to run on, otherwise known as the great and all powerful "Flippy". Believe it or not, it still runs just fine... just every once in a while he would lose power and reboot, and I couldn't figure out why. Perhaps his way of telling me "I'm too old for this mess". Some may have noticed I've resurrected another old machine of mine, "Sauron", with fresh guts and new life to take over for Flippy. Alas, you were a great host machine Flippy, one which to work around the clock but desperately needed, and deserved, retirement. Perhaps there will be some use for you again. Maybe you will find a home with a young aspiring web developer, such as Brian K. and me were when we first acquired Flippy, who will wipe your rusty Windows 2003 server ridden drives clean, put a fresh installation of linux on you, fire you up and learn how to "master the web" as we once did. You had an epic run Flip', many good times.

In the wake of dusting off Flippy and remembering all the good times, I started to think back about all he's done. Luckily, even if my memory isn't so great, the internet's memory is. Ah what we find on the web of the 'days of old' is astounding. As you may have noticed, Flippydisk.com hasn't had any content up for quite some time now and I've always wanted to do something with it again. But what to do and with what design theme? Out of curiosity I used the web archive, aka the "way back machine", to look back at what Flippydisk used to be. After sifting through several years of archives I came across this version of the site, which sparked a lot of good memories of game servers and websites we've hosted in the past.

After looking at it again I decided, hey it's still not so bad! Looks decent on most modern browsers and pretty good on mobile phones, at least in landscape mode. You know what, I'm going to resurrect this theme... a quick view source and... OMG HAHHAHAHHAHAHA wow. Go ahead and do it if you're a web developer, it's good for a laugh. OK, wipe the spit off your monitor and calm down. Oh what a tangled world wide web we used to weave when things like CSS were just starting to come into play. Except for this particular news post and it's use of some standard tags almost everything else is the original code from back in May 2002. <font> tags, unclosed double <br> tags for spacing, inline bgcolor and other deprecated attributes & tags, 1px transparent gif's & 1px wide table cells with white backgrounds for borders, and yes that's a page hit counter at the bottom hehe. No longer working of course, but that number got up there for a home-hosted online gaming community amongst a few friends. Fun stuff & good memories.

So now that I've decided to bring Flippydisk.com back to life, I'm at least going to overhaul the code structure. As those of you who code can imagine, it might be good for a laugh but it's just not scalable, and I just can't morally leave it like this. As to what it'll be and what information it'll hold when it's done, that has yet to be determined. It'll certainly mention the multitude of websites Flippydisk network hosts & it's admins have developed, but it'll take some mulling over to think about if it becomes more than that.

For now, it's happy retirement Flippy, welcome back Sauron, and here's to sifting through a ton of jumbled HTML mess to turn it into a usable theme again. Cheers!