Movin’ On Up
I’ve exceeded my bandwith at TypePad three months in a row now. They haven’t charged me anything extra, so they must be pretty nice people over there. I don’t intend to abuse that graciousness. I will recommend TypePad to anyone who wants to start a blog with a minimum of fuss.
Over the next month, I will be migrating the Daily Dose to a new server. I plan on running the two blogs concurrently until then to help weed out any problems with the new one. I have a few issues to resolve before I point my domain to the new server.
- Figure out how to change stuff at the new site
- Permalinks are all broken and need to be fixed
- All the img tags point to the TypePad server
That’s my list so far, I’m sure I will be adding to it. I’ve moved all the posts over to see if I could do it. They seem to have moved over okay, but I’ve only checked a small fraction of them. At any rate, I’ll have to re-export/re-import when I make the change so I don’t lose any comments. Maybe I can fix those image tags at the same time. You can see the new site at http://www.dicks-blog.com/ but don’t get married to it, because it will change drastically before the end of the month.
I’ve decided to go with WordPress as my blogging tool. It’s free and seems to be easier to learn and use than any ASP.Net tools I saw. They also actually list the features on their website, unlike every ASP.Net based tool. (Thanks to everyone for the comments last time which helped me get my head around the features I wanted.) My new host will be ReviseMedia. They have a stripped down hosting plan just for WordPress users with enough bandwidth for me.
If you have any suggestions regarding content, format, layout or anything else, I’m all ears. Leave a comment or send me an email.
Congrats on your success, Dick. I remember when you were just a blogger wannabe. You had questions. I had answers (thanks to Radio Shack). Now look at you! Changing servers. Changing software. A TechWeb Finalist. And to think that I had played a minor role in your blogging career. I’m so proud…
BTW, I’ll be interested to hear what you think of Word Press. I’ve kind of been leaning in that direction myself. That hosting company sounds too good to be true. I’ll be checking them out too.
Thanks, JWalk. I feel like I’ve been blogging for years, but it’s only been six months. I appreciate all the help you gave me when I was starting out, but there was one thing that was probably most instrumental to the success of the blog. It used to be that 50% of the hits on my referrers log were from j-walk.com. Then one day, poof, they were gone. I didn’t realize it right away, but checked your site and saw I’d fallen off the “Worth a Look” section. Having all that exposure from you was key, and I really appreciate the head start it gave me. Now 90% of my hits are from google (and TechWeb this week) and it’s hardly worth reading the referrer logs anymore. Anyway, if I win, I owe you a Starbucks (and if I don’t, I owe you something that’s actually good).
Dick - glad to hear you are moving to WordPress! I’m certainly no expert with it, but I did manage to get it up and running and customized a bit, so if you need a hand with anything, let me know. You’ll definitely want to drop that “default” style sheet. It’s kind of a mess. It looks fine to me so far, but a bunch of folks have had issues with it. I’d recomend that you try the “Gemini” set of styles as a starting point. Really basic, easily customizeable and very standards compliant. Info is at http://atthe404.com/blog/ - I’ve seen some very cool layouts done with it as a starting point.
Paul: Although you didn’t know it, you’re first on my list to email as soon as I figure out what I DON’T know. Thanks for the CSS tip, I’ll make that change tonight. I have a long list of stuff I need to figure out. Once I get through the forums, etc., I’ll ping you for the stuff I couldn’t solve. Thanks for the offer.
Dick - congrats on your new site. Just an observation - I’m using IE 6.0 and the header on the new site drops off the right side of my screen. I know you’re still in the process of building it but thought I would mention it anyway. Please don’t take it out on the cat. Good luck!