Back before the book came out, the PR people at Penguin said, “Good news! We have enough money to get your a website.”
I said, “Cool.”
They said, “What would like to have on the website?”
So I thought about what might be cool. Maps. A bestiary. Samples of music. An FAQ. A way for readers to contact me…
“…and maybe a blog,” I said. “I could probably try doing that.”
Of course, it quickly became apparent that my fancier ideas were problematic because I don’t have any graphic skill or the ability to code. but blogging comes fairly easy to me. Probably all those years I spent writing for the campus paper.
All this while, through three years and roughly 350 blogs, I’ve been using blogger. Not through any concious choice, mind you. It’s just what the website people gave me, so I used it.
The interface wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great, either. There were certain features I wanted, but they didn’t seem to be available. Eventually I did some research and discovered what I probably wanted to be using was WordPress. That’s what most of the pros and tech-heads use.
So this week the website folks migrated my blog over to WordPress. Most everything should look the same, the old blogs are still there (though we lost some comments, sorry.)
It feels a lot nicer already. Smoother. The interface is intuitive. I don’t know if this is the Cadillac of blogging tools, but it’s at least a nice Lexus. Blogger was sort of like a Geo Metro I used to drive. Serviceable but tinny.
I’ll beg your indulgence while I’m getting used to the new platform. Normal blog-service should return on Monday, but I have way more buttons and gewgaws available to me now. As I play with them, I’m bound to fuck some things up.
For example. There’s a button up on my toolbar with a honest-to-god omega on it. I’m almost afraid to push it. Do I really want to potentially Omega my blog?
I think I do.
…
Oh. It just adds special characters to my text. Ω. Not quite as cool as I was hoping, but not as dangerous as I feared. I can use it to spell Tinuë the right way. Functional. I like functional. ƒ
And how about a link? Let’s see what I have in my bookmarks…
Holy shit! Homestar Runner posted something new! They’ve been MIA for about four months now. I was worried about them.
Lastly and leastly, let’s see if I can post a picture.
Hmmm…. nope. Got an error message.
See what I mean? It will probably be a couple weeks before we’re back up to full speed. But once I’m over my learning curve, we’ll be better than ever. Promise.
See you soon folks,
pat
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