The Last Post I Plan to Make For a While About Blogging Software
Posted on October 2, 2007 Posted by John Scalzi 18 Comments
This is probably going to sound a little stupid, but it’s actually psychically nice to have the Whatever working. Having the site down and/or in various states of internal implosion was actually not very good for me; it’s one thing to decide to take a week or two from the site because I want to, and to have the site down for a better part of a month because one part of it doesn’t want to play nice with the other part. I regret to say that crap like that distracts me intensely; I’m not particularly zen when one of my main avenues of play and steam release (and, yes, also publicity and business) gets pulled out from under me.
Now, whether WordPress will cause me grief over time is something I’ll have to see, but so far, so good. The site handled 18k unique visitors yesterday without either a blip or complaint from my host. I’m down a bit from the usual attendance, but then again, I’ve been not writing here for weeks at a time recently, so, really, what should I expect. I’ll deal with any glitches that come as we get back up to cruising speed. But for now, hey, I got my site back, and that’s a pretty happy feeling.
I’ll probably continue to do additional fiddling, and building out of the site over the next several days, but it’ll be mostly minor stuff, and I can’t imagine that most of you will care one way or another, and I’m pretty fed up with it myself, so my plan is to just stop talking about it and start writing about other stuff for a while. IF you have suggestions for topics, by all means put them in the comment thread. I could use a kick start after sputtering about for so long.
Welcome back!
Oh, and suggestions for threads? How about some group literary criticism? In a serious sense, I mean, not just “this sucked” but discussion of themes and structure in a specific book, or possibly in the genre its self?
Alternately, if you wanted something political and potentially rancorous, we could talk about how to respectfully interpret criticism from a minority when you’re in the majority.
No worries, John.
I know you didn’t do it on purpose, and the timing of the downtime actually worked out well for me, since I’d been behind on my blog-reading anyway.
Good to see you back, though.
I think you should blog about your visit to the Creationist Museum.
FYI: What with the new blogging platform and all, my old feed in Bloglines broke — I had to re-establish the feed so I could be alerted to your fresh blatherations.
According to Bloglines, I’m the first subscriber to the new feed. I figure this is important-ish b/c Bloglines told me I was one of 663 subscribers to the old feed.
So . . . possibly there’s some way to alert the old Whatever RSS junkies that they have a new source for their fix?
I just sent out a note via the MT install telling people to come back here and make an RSS feed switch. We’ll see if it goes out and if people see it.
Oh, yeah, I was gonna mention that about the feed but then someone esle did so here I am wasting space and energy!!!
Looks great. I like the column look.
Well,what handheld game system would you recommedn? Also,what have you been reading lately?
I really missed the pictures. Why, I don’t know. How are you at taking pics of birds? (Now that the blog’s back up, there’s all this extra time you need to fill… right?)
I say do something on politics to draw the throngs back. It’s been a banner month for topics, just hit whomever is testifying that day.
Is it to early to mention hit generation through the exploitation of thin-sliced porcine products and Felis domestica yet?
Ah, it’s lovely to have you and the Whatever back!
With respect to “additional fiddling,” would you consider putting the links to next and previous entries at the end of the comments also? My sore mouse hand and I would appreciate having them at both the top and bottom of an entry.
I want to know how your ladies are doing. Oh, and I could use a good dose of snark – doesn’t matter what it’s about.
I just sent out a note via the MT install telling people to come back here and make an RSS feed switch. We’ll see if it goes out and if people see it.
Er, I didn’t see it. I’d been periodically checking Scalzi Speaks, finally went hey, I’ll bet the RSS feed address changed–better go check Whatever itself. (Ten messages!)
Good to see you back.
Belated new-look comments:
1) The feed for this actual blog doesn’t appear to be linked anywhere that I can see on the front page. There are little orange icons for your delicious account & two AOL blogs, but not for _this_ one.
2) Having the link to comments at the top of the entry is kind of annoying, because I like to read the entry before I decide whether I want to read comments, and then have to scroll back up.
Kate: I’ll look at the code and see if I can move the comments to the bottom. I’ll also add a link for the RSS feed.
Update: Moved the comments to the bottom.
Cool, thanks.
The only problem is, you changed the feed location, so I haven’t been reading you until I found out Whatever was back up. I could geek at you the location where it WAS, and demand you put a permanent redirect to the new feed. Instead, I’ll just get to your house and expect to be fed bacon.