Because nothing is ever good enough, I’ve decided to migrate Dave’s Fiction Warehouse from good old Blogger to a self-hosted site using WordPress.
Why? That’s an excellent question, since I’ve spent the last few hours learning the intricacies of the new system, and will probably spend a lot more before I know what I’m doing. In the meantime, this will be a lab site. I’ll experiment and fiddle with things here, then put the word out when I feel it’s ready for my eight or so regular readers to have a look at it.
One of the best things about WordPress (I hope) is this theme called Thesis, which allows for a huge amount of customization without the need for learning a lot of code. That’s also one of the worst things about it, since the sheer number of choices makes for a steep learning curve.
Just another naked royal
Thoroughly modern vampires
Might as well be Chelsea
No end to selective outrage
Borrowed knowledge is better than none
Congratulations! Now I think I’ll be able to comment again. I have not commented for ages on your blogger version because the comments were set so that only people in your “group” could comment (ie people you had authorised). I was too shy to send an email to ask if this was deliberate or accidental, for if the former, I had been excluded. So regard this comment in way of a test. If it works, I shall return and see what happens!
It seems the capital ‘B’ with which the post begins is eager to be promoted up the alphabet to ‘K,’ by the way.
Certainly the new blog looks more ‘writerly’ – like the digital equivalent of a piece of parchment. Good luck!
Maxine! So nice to hear from you again. About the comments: Awhile back I realized my Blogspot site was getting spammed a lot, and so I fumbled around with the settings trying to control it. Obviously, I did the wrong thing. Sorry. The whole comment-moderation thing remains cryptic to me even here. Some tips would be appreciated. The last thing I want to do is prevent people from commenting — it’s the coin of the realm around here.
Inks Correspondent: Thanks for the kind words! I suppose those drop caps are overdoing it a bit, but allow me to fool with the design options awhile longer.
Getting back to comments, I attempted to leave a comment on your blog, but was thwarted. It insisted I sign in, even though I already was. I’ll try again later.
Nice new site! Maybe you can teach me how to finesse WordPress since I’m too afraid to try anything different with mine.
Thanks, Jessie. I’ll be happy to share whatever I learn about WordPress, but as I mentioned, much of it is not exactly intuitive and you’ll be seeing a lot of mistakes here in the weeks to come. I didn’t know your site was running on it.
No, no – the drop caps are essential to the manuscript aesthetic. If it were at all appropriate for my own blog I’d include them.
Not sure what’s going on at the blog – if you figure out why you can’t leave comments please let me know!
Thanks for the nice comment, Dave. I don’t know all that much about comments, other than there are certain default settings in the dashboard which you may have to over-ride. YOu can let anyone comment if they leave an email address, or pre-vet (have comments go into moderation before appearing on-site), or make people fill out those captcha forms (copy distorted letters). I had a wordpress blog for a while and found that its spam system (Askimet) was pretty good at catching stuff, though watch out if anyone posts a comment with more than one URL in it as sometimes gets counted as spam.
I blog at typepad (for which you have to pay) and they have recently upgraded their commenting process so that you can sign in with a range of applications (eg typepad, facebook, twitter etc) and then your comment goes directly to the blog site without any need for additional anti-spam measures. Maybe WordPress will do or has done something similar as most of these blogging platforms seem to keep up with each other in these ways?
Well, at least I see that I only have to moderate someone’s first comment; after that they’re allowed to post immediately. So I guess I’ll stick with this system for awhile. Damned spammers! As with low-lifes of every stripe, they just make life more difficult for everyone …
Hi Dave,
I just stumbled upon your new blog site. Very nice! Don’t worry, you’ll soon master the software. My most recent former employer (a four-person-office national nonprofit) was handed an edict from the board to switch from a monthly print publication to an online publication — from scratch — in essentially one month. We did it, thanks to WordPress and the newly minted media arts graduate recently hired to answer phones. WordPress has some exasperating quirks, but even I was posting in short order. Bought a couple of books that helped, too. (Of course, I credit the invaluable Harris training in Melbourne for my success …). Incidentally, the nonprofit’s membership — in short order — rebelled at the online-only publication, so three months later, the new board decided to add a print version. I got the hell out of Dodge before my head exploded.
Hi Sarah. Yes, WordPress does have a bit of a learning curve after a couple of years of using Blogger, but I think I’m OK with it now. Thanks for the encouragement. Now all I have to do is get back to posting more frequently. Lately I’ve had a hard time caring enough about anything to write about it. Seasonal affective disorder, no doubt. Or laziness.
I know the feeling too well, I’m afraid. Not caring, I mean. Don’t know if I can stand another dreary Missoula winter. Hang in there — and keep posting!