Things…

Are coming together, but my to-do list is long.  Very very long.  Some things I’d been meaning to do on the old version, are going to get done now.  Eventually.  Some already have.  And this new version still has some tweaking needed.  Broken links to fix.  I have a plug-in seeking them out, but then I have to hunt down the correct links.  And well, that’s a fair bit of work.

However, slowly but surely the blog is coming together and in the meantime, it seems to be quite functional.

As far as I can tell, the feed burner and twitter feed are both operational.  I guess I’ll find out soon enough for the twitter portion of that statement.  Though, if it’s working then so is the feed burner in general.

It says it’s working.  In both cases.  But I’m not seeing updates.  So, hopefully things will sort themselves out in due time.  I’d like to be able to cross all feed related items off my list.

Things To Keep In Mind

Alright, as I rebuild this site and configure feeds and such you need to keep one thing in mind:  My old feed address?  Yeah, it doesn’t work.  Sorry.  So some of you, depending on how you want about subscribing to this here blog, are going to have to resub.

There is a lovely little gadget up at the top that if you click it, you can add my feed to a reader.  The gadget is orange.  It’s under a bunch of buttons.  I’m pointing out the obvious to many of you.  Because it took me a freakin long ass time to code all that shit.  Twice.  5 times if you count over on blogger.  Go love on my buttons dammit!  (And let me know if something does not work.)

Alright.

Back to building.

And preying this post right here, this one, goes to my Facebook page wall and my twitter stream.  Because if it doesn’t, I have to figure out what the hell I did wrong.  And I have no clue what the hell that is.  Not going to lie.  No clue.  So hopefully this works.  That shit is the not so fun part of building a site.

And that orange button?  Go ahead and click it!

Going Black

*Insert a lot of tech talk here that I only vaguely understand so thank goodness I have a tech guy who knows his shit.*

But what it basically boils down to is that on May 22 at roughly 9-10PM EST, this site is going black.  Or more specifically the domain will point to a holder page for an hour or so while my stuff is exported off here and imported onto the WordPress site.  Seems we can’t do that with custom domains involved.  When it comes back up at roughly 10-11PM EST, it will be on the new WP site.

We hope.

Meh.  This isn’t an exact art.

But I have every single post saved to my hard drive in like 2 different versions and faith in my tech guy who also has everything on his drive.  Though the main blogger isn’t being touched, it just will no longer be found at my domain.  Blogger will not be deleted at any point until I am confident that the WP is 100$ good to go.  Even after my domain points to WP.

So basically, cross fingers and don’t be shocked if my site poofs for a bit.  It will return.  Hopefully better than ever.

Oh, and the WP is still a work in progress.  Somethings will need tweaked after the switch.  Some things I can’t change until the switch is made.  Links, etc.  And somethings will be built in after the switch.  So it’ll be a work in progress.  It’ll just be a functional work in progress.

So, with that all said, I suppose I’ll see you on the other side.

Hope you like purple. ;)

Head-Up-7-Up

I’m giving as much advance warning as I can.  With this switch to WordPress, some features that are blogger specific won’t work anymore.  I don’t know if those of you who follow via blogger, will still be following.  So if that is your means of reaching my blog, you might want to be sure you have me book-marked elsewhere.  My URL is not changing.  So if that’s how you have my saved wherever you have me saved, that will still work.

Some of the things you are use to seeing will have to be rebuilt.  Some are blogger specific widgets.  I am going to try for the WordPress equivalent, but we’ll see if that works out.  Some of them I can rebuild once links are shifted over.  I honestly have no idea what will be broken and what will work.  Some things will carry over in a different way.  Don’t know don’t know.

I’m sure I’ll have lots of broken links throughout where I have linked to myself.  Hard links will break.  I’m going to fix those as I can.  I’m getting to the point where there is only so much i can build in advance.  Since I’m sitting on a temp URL anything I build within it is a temp link.  And there is no point in linking up temp links.

So I think I’m getting to where I’m just going to toss everything up and see where it lands.

I will not delete this blog off of blogger until everything is fixed.  I’ll export posts, import to WP.  I’ll switch my domain from pointing to blogger to start pointing to WP.  But everything will remain on blogger, just with the blogger URL, until I push the delete button.  And I won’t do that until I’m content WP is working properly.

So things might get a little weird in the next week or two.  Building is faster than expected.  Probably because I’m not going fancy, at least not yet, and I’ve built this damn site so many times before.  I just have to find my way around wordpress.

It would be awesome if WP would elt me import my blog.  That is the biggest holdup.  But I’ve given my tech guy full access to this blog and he had access to the WP already, so I’m leaving that in his capable hands.  Because it isn’t working for me at all.  Hopefully soon.  But he’s got much on his plate and I don’t even want to be top priority.

AWOL

Remember back when blogger and G+ made me Furious George and I wanted off Blogger bad but most other options required self hosting which is $$$$$?  Well I asked a friend to take a peek at my site for design purposes.  He is my go-to for this place.  He taught me SEO, which seems to be working.  But as much as those SEO heavy pieces pull people in for that bit, the majority of those people, don’t stick around. (And I humbly thank those of you who do.)  So I asked him to take a peek to see if there was anything I can do design wise to keep people coming back.  While he’s still going to be taking a look at that… he remarked he needs to get me off blogger and onto wordpress.  I agreed but pointed out I can’t afford to host it myself or have someone else.

Oh hey, he hosts for people.  Has all this space paid for that the majority of which isn’t being used.  And he’s be happy to give me the long time friend discount.  Next excuse?

So it seems I’m upgrade the site.  Really, the only thing not changing is the domain name and the posts.  I can import those.

So if I’m not around a whole lot, you now know why.  This is a bit of a project.  To say the least.

And then that project will be followed by, or interrupted by, moving.  No for sure dates there.  I suppose longer update is in order though.  Eventually.  The whole thing gives me a headache.

Anywho.  You will all know when the upgrade is complete.  Nothing will look the same.  lol  And I’m sure I’ll drop a post or two for it.