Belly 2.0: The Re-hatching
No re-hatching is complete without eggs. Here, a cuddly, baby Cthulhu bursts forth from his shell and plots world destruction. He’s young, though. Perhaps we can avert disaster with some motherly love and a perky little chant or two. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!
Not that changing over to a new blogging engine bears any resemblance to a horror movie, mind you. Nope, not at all.
It was all going swimmingly, honest. Last Tuesday, I hatched this grand plan to upload and install Wordpress (and transfer over all our archive posts) during the Day Without Food Blogs. I’d created a bare-bones page in honor of Net Neutrality, and set up a redirect so that I could, (meanwhile and quite nefariously) work behind the scenes and ready Belly 2.0 for a grand unveiling.
And then the Wordpress import engine stripped all of the CSS out of every single last archive post and my two hours of work turned into, well, many more. Many, many more. Because you know, once you’re forced to futz with one thing, you end up futzing with another, and then another, and then the futzing just explodes into a giant, week-long futz-o-rama.
Here, we have an egg discovered on board the French frigate Amitié during the Napoleonic Wars. Little did anyone suspect at the time, but this egg contained not just any dragon, but a most impressive Chinese dragon (with a most charming personality, to boot). To read about the dragon’s adventures during the Age of Sail, you simply must check out Naomi Novik’s Temeraire trilogy
, new from Del Rey. “It’s crunchy and delicious, just like cow!” — Dragon Dish Daily
(At which point Chopper says “enough with the futzing already. Get the damn site back up!”)
So, here we are. (And, yes, I still have more futzing to do.)
And now, a few truly boring technical notes:
1. Why the change over? Don’t get me wrong, I’m awfully fond of Movable Type and it’s served me well since the day we started this puppy, but when MT introduced version 3 and started charging for it, I said no thanks, I’ll stick with free because free and my budget get along better. All fine and good until MT Blacklist fell by the wayside. Within days, we were inundated with comment spam and my only recourse was to ether screen all comments or shut down almost all of our old comment threads. When I found myself spending more time closing threads and deleting spam than futzing (creatively) with the blog, I knew it was time for a change.
2. And since, as I mentioned, we like free, I dove into the groovy, open-source world of Wordpress. Oooh, the plug-ins! So many toys; so little time. I’m still learning, still making big, stupid mistakes, but I think now, finally, we’re ready to go live with my futzing and see how it all plays out. And hey, if I do say so myself, I think the new site looks pretty darned good for the work of an old fart (in internet years only, dammit!) whose most recent computer grade was a D in Pascal. I kid you not.
3. Whither permalinks? And since I’m not that bright in the areas of advanced coding, I’ve yet to figure out how to make all my MT permalinks magically redirect to the newer, spiffier Wordpress permalinks en masse. No worries, though. I have my own method of making them redirect (the old fashioned way, one damn link at a time…), and in the meantime, the MT links will stay active for folks who’ve made use of them in their own blog posts.
4. Now, most of my future futzing will be with the sidebars, because you can never have too many cool things to add to your sidebars. (Actually, you can, and that’s the problem. Where to put it all? What to keep? What to ditch? How do I want to do my blogroll anyway, especially when I’ve got far too many links?) So, to alert our readers to the more interesting futzes on the sidebars, or to alert them to interesting things in general, I’ve set up a snackbar. See? It’s up there on the left, just below the Rabelais quote. Click on the comment number and it’ll open up, just like a regular post. How cool is that?
5. My second main area of futzing will be with the archives. I’ve already overhauled our categories, and our next project (yes, I’m making Chopper help me with this one), will be a Recipe Archive. Stay tuned.
6. RSS feeds. Oh hell. They’re probably completely pooched right now. I’ll be working on that as well.
7. Goodies, more goodies, and surprises. In short, there’s more. I’m not telling.
May 22nd, 2006 at 10:33 pm
Miz D,
Looks really good. And I like the new banner.
May 22nd, 2006 at 11:31 pm
I’m totally impressed. I would never even dare attempt something like this without tons of assistance from Rand and Bradley. I love the new look, and thanks for linking to me.
May 23rd, 2006 at 12:37 pm
I like the free part about WordPress, but I’d be helpless with all the futzing. You’re a brave blogger, you talented cheapskate!
Your banner is great. How’d you get Ralph Steadman to do free art for you? ;)
Welcome back!
May 23rd, 2006 at 1:08 pm
Thanks, Kevin! Gah, this took me long enough!
Hey Kalyn, I probably could have used Rand’s help a dozen times over considering how many screw-ups I made! BTW, one of my (many) reasons for updating was my woefully out-of-date blogroll. As in, I should have linked to you ages ago! I’m still working on that end of it. The blogroll is a work in progress, but at least now I’ll make some progress on it!
CC: Ralph who?
Kidding. :-) In all seriousness, I’m a big fan of Mr. Steadman, and I can’t draw realistic animals or do tidy hand lettering to save my life, so the two rather go hand in hand. (You should have seen me with my dime store water colors, crappy brushes, and typing paper strewn across the kitchen table. Everything was messy messy messy. The Steadman homage was inevitable.)
May 23rd, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Very nice. I’ve never attempted much beyond a simple, standard-issue Blogger template. Maybe one day I’ll get a wild hair and do it.
FWIW, I got a decent grade in Pascal, but then when I tried to follow it up with Visual Basic, I tanked dramatically and had to withdraw. :-)
May 23rd, 2006 at 2:51 pm
The site looks great and I think you’re a real warrior! I got nervous just reading what you’re contending with in the change. The slightest thing throws me for a loop.
May 23rd, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Sweet redesign! At least now I know what you were doing while you were out with spring fever. *grin*
I’ve debated WP for a while now, but I’ve got 10 blogs I’m managing for folks and the thought of transferring it all is awful. Not to mention that I’m trying to get away from the need for my own server, I’m currently paying for a satellite connection for me at home (complete with a dish the size of the ones at bars in my front yard) and a DSL connection for my server (which lives in Seattle) and it’s stupidly expensive.
Whose artwork on the banner? It’s very cool, evocative…very *you*.
May 23rd, 2006 at 7:15 pm
Jamie, at the risk of dating myself horribly, Visual Basic didn’t exist back when I got that D in Pascal. :-)
Thanks, Sher! I’m nervous too — believe me, I still have a huge list of site work to contend with, and the fear that something will indeed screw everything up!
Hey Kitchenmage, I know exactly how you feel. I have other sites I need to update, transfer, etc, and it’s SCARY. Also, major sympathies on the spendy connection & server issues. I struggle with that a bit, balancing what I can do for myself vs server space for web clients and so on — hard when my web “business” is so teensy!
Banner is all mine, or rather mine-ish, as I noted above to Cookiecrumb that I was obviously channeling Ralph Steadman at the time. Well, that and channeling the moods of Platelicker and The Cat.
May 24th, 2006 at 8:40 am
YAY!
Another WP convert ;)
Sorry the conversion took so long….
Just think I DID MINE ALL BY HAND! ctrl+C Ctrl+V oh boy
May 24th, 2006 at 9:04 am
Very spiffy!
May 24th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Ahhhhahahahah, Clare, my fellow convert…. Ctrl+C Ctrl+V —> is what I am currently doing for every single past post to create every single Permalink redirect. Oh, my poor, aching hand!
Thanks, Cate! We like spiffy. :-)
May 24th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
Welcome back and congrats on the swanky new digs. Very impressive! I love the banner artwork. I think you’ve done Platelicker and Cat justice.
May 25th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
Thanks Tea! We’ll see how well the animals agree as time progresses. (I think The Cat is up to something, yet again…)
May 27th, 2006 at 8:05 am
LOLOL
It is kinda nice that someone else knows the pain…. I did it all in one day, I was bleeding from the eyeballs at the end of it… sorry it is obviously still painful. But I am glad to say the benefits have been more than worth it! I just need a new revamp…. hmmmmmmm
May 28th, 2006 at 4:59 am
WOW. you are a super star. I can not even imagine doing all that and have only been up a month.
Everything looks so fabulous.
May 30th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Very nice face lift! I’ll have to do something with mine soon.
June 2nd, 2006 at 4:13 pm
I like the new banner a lot, it looks like it has always been there!
June 7th, 2006 at 7:33 am
Yes! Finally the final piece I needed. Thankyou!
Gef
June 15th, 2006 at 1:56 am
Aha! Now I understand why I haven’t been seeing you in my RSS listings lately - it lost track of you in the changeover, I guess. I love the new look, very swank!