Welcome to My Blog 3.0
My web designer, John Saddington (a.k.a. @human3rror), has spent the last week porting my blog from TypePad (my previous blogging platform) to WordPress. This has been a big project—much bigger than I expected. I only wished I had started with WordPress when I began blogging several years ago.
You’ll notice several changes:
- The design is much different. Not everyone will like it, but I’m pleased. I think it feels professional but also personal. That was my goal.
- The photos of me rotate. Every time you refresh the page or move to a new page, you get a new photo of me. “Big deal,” I know. But I couldn’t just settle on one photo. My life is too multi-faceted. Plus I thought you might enjoy peering into the visual aspects of my life.
- The search engine is easy to find. People often email me, asking for links to articles they remember seeing but can’t find. The WordPress search engine is very robust, and I think it’s placement and functionality will make it easier for you to find the stuff you are interested in.
- I have added additional pages. I get asked to speak a lot. I also get asked if I will accept advertising. John showed me how I could do this tastefully, so I have done so. However, I will only run ads for products or services that I personally use and can recommend. I also added a page about copyrights and permissions.
There’s still more to come, so let me set your expectations:
- You will probably discover broken links. This was the biggest challenge in moving from TypePad to WordPress. We did the best we could, but there will likely be problems.
- Not all my images are displaying properly. In fact, some images in older posts won’t display at all. I am having to upload these to my new server and adjust the links. The good news is that all the content is here.
- You will need to re-subscribe to my RSS feed. This is probably the worst part of the move. TypePad just uses a completely different feed mechanism. You can just click on the link in the right sidebar. It only takes a couple of mouse clicks and you’re done. I apologize for the inconvenience of this.
- We are going to do a major comment upgrade. We plan to install Intense Debate this weekend. It is an extremely robust comment plugin. It will allow for “threaded comments,” ratings, user profiles, etc. I have wanted this for a very long time.
The bottom line: please be patient with me. If you discover a problem, please email me. We’ll try to get it fixed as soon as we can.
By the way, if you need a web designer/developer who specializes in WordPress blogs, I highly recommend John. Not only does he know everything there is to know about WordPress, he is also one of the most responsive vendors I have ever used. You can email him here.
Posted on February 10, 2009
In: Social Media
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