Well, I think everything should be set for the new domain name. I updated the primary domain on the hosting account, and got the old domain to forward to the new one. If you’re not seeing that yet, it might take a little longer to propagate. Both sites will get you here until March 14 when the old domain expires.
Now it’s time for lunch at a new place in town – HuHot. It’s a Mongolian BBQ with a really dumb name, but everyone who’s been there says it’s awesome. I’ll let you know how it goes.
The Common Exception domain is set to expire in mid-March unless I renew it, and I think it’s time to let it go. Over the next few days, I’ll be working on moving the site to a new domain. Common Exception has been fun, but the 3 roommates who started it have gone their separate ways for the most part and the name doesn’t really mean much anymore. I’ve been the sole author for a while, and I’m going to take a few more steps to make this a site for Amber and me. (Now if I can just get her to post!)
I’ve owned a few other domains for quite some time, and it seems like a natural transition to move the site to one of them in particular. So starting soon, the sight will be renamed and move to MadisonMonroes.com. The old domain will redirect to the new one until CommonException.com expires in March. I’m also hoping to start devoting more time to the site in general and add more features and content. For the 3 or so people actually reading, send ideas my way. Wish me luck!
Just upgraded the site to WordPress 2.7 in preparation for some changes in 2009. It’s a huge jump from 2.1.2 or whatever I was on before. I’ll have to dig into the new goodies in the new year.
I decided to get ambitious this morning and I went through and added some cool stuff to the site. First, I’ve got a new contact form you can use to send me a message. I’m not really expecting much to come of it, but hey, it’s there. Thanks to One Woman Show for the plugin.
Next, you’ll notice there’s a section in the sidebar showing recent comments and trackbacks. This one is also kind of useless because no one actually leaves comments, but maybe that will change one day. Thanks to Krischan Jodies for this one.
The last and probably coolest change is that I’m now able to use Lightbox to display (some) photos. To see it in action, try clicking on one of the thumbnails in a post below.
Edit: I almost forgot – a little while back I fixed my flickr integration so you should be able to see all of that again at /photos/. (I lied – some combination of FAlbum and/or flickr is being a pain in the ass.) Eventually I’d like to put a button on my nifty toolbar up there, but since this is a part of my latest theme, I have to figure out how to hack it first. Also, this doesn’t use Lightbox; I’m not sure how complicated that will be.
Edit 2: I also wrote a few posts over the last year that I never posted for whatever reason. Their now sprinkled around in the archive on the appropriate dates, mostly from our honeymoon last February.
So I haven’t transferred over everything from my old host. Frankly, there’s a lot of junk that was on the server that I’m probably going to get rid of. But until I decide what to toss and what to move over, there’s probably going to be no images and plenty of broken links in older posts. I’ll fix them eventually.
Well. I’ve been neglecting my site. So much in fact that I didn’t realize it went down a while back. I don’t think it took me too long to realize it, but once I did it took a few weeks to get it working again. To make a long story short – under my current hosting if there’s a problem with my account, there’s only one person who can get it fixed. If that person isn’t available, I’m just out of luck.
Anyway, I recently registered a few new domains (I’m not abandoning this one quite yet) and I’m gearing up to switch hosts to something more reliable and more in my control. I probably don’t have many readers at this point, anyway, but some other changes are coming. I’m working on a new layout and adding some content to make this a *little* more than a blog. The site may be down again for a bit while I get things changed over.
Update: The photo gallery is now open. Over the next few days I’ll be attempting some further integration like adding pictures to the sidebar and other parts of the site. If you’ve got a flickr account, feel free to comment on the photos themselves by visiting the flickr page linked under each photo. If you don’t have an account, consider signing up or ask me for an invitation.
The lack of updates could mean I’m just lazy. It could mean I’ve been working on our taxes. Or it could mean that I’ve been working on improving the site. Over the weekend I started working on some additions that should make things a lot more interesting around here. At minimum, I’ve got a photo gallery in the works (that’s right, Jamaica pictures are coming) and who knows, maybe I’ll also get rid of the default WordPress theme soon.
The photo gallery is actually online already, but I’m keeping it’s location under wraps for the time being. I’ve got a little bit of work to do in giving pictures more interesting names and making sure things are in order. It’s setup through my new flickr account and a pretty little plugin called FAlbum that I discovered yesterday. I’m still trying to figure out what all I can do with it – I’ll unveil it soon.
This is a pretty cool list of ways to take better pictures. I’m happy to say I’ve been using most of these techniques for quite a while now.
I’m really looking forward to adding more photos to this site. I’m hoping I can make it a regular thing, but there’s a lot of planning I need to do first. Be on the lookout for more visuals coming soon.
I’ve successfully installed WordPress. Now to start my Blogger import, clean up the server, and get my template reset…
I Went to post tonight and Blogger was choking hard. For hours, it wouldn’t post anything, but instead threw up some unhelpful error (001 java.net.UnknownHostException – what the hell is that?). In the meantime I managed to screw up my template and left things looking crappy until I was able to hack together a fix. I don’t even know if this post will show up anytime soon. Anyway, it’s been a long time coming, and this was just the push I needed to end our 19 month relationship.
Blogger, you made it incredibly easy to get on the web, and I thank you for that. You’ve come a long way with new features, usability, and decent reliability. But It’s time to move on. Don’t take this personally, I’ve just found a better blog system.
I will very soon be switching over to WordPress, most likely before the end of the weekend. More on that later.
Edit: It’s now 7:45 the next morning and Blogger is finally allowing me to post again. I’ve also discovered that Blogger now has the ability to moderate comments, but I don’t get spam comments (yet) anyway, so I don’t think it’s enough to save this thing.