The End of (another) era...

My experiment with hand-coding is over. I've proven that I can do it, I've learned more about HTML and Java script than I ever wanted to know and I have come to the realization that, although I have the ability to do these things, it is not why I started blogging or why I got my own server space.

Frankly, it's become a chore.

But how did I get to this point? Glad you asked.

After becoming thoroughly disgusted with Blogspot, I got my own domain name and server and started messing around with HTML. I then looked at literally dozens of content management applications which were either too complex for my simple thoughts or were woefully inadequate for what I wanted to do.

Or they were very expensive.

At that point, I decided that I could hand-code my web log like it was done way back when Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church and dispense with all the third party nonsense. Like I said, I've proven that I can do that.

But content management, I now realize, is not my cup of tea. I'm spending more and more time formatting and organizing and moving files than I am writing and generally mouthing off about some issue or another - the real reason I started doing this.

So the next step was to find a happy medium between doing things my own way and doing it the easy way while being told what hoops to jump through.

I finally settled on Blogger. I know, I hear your incredulous gasps.

"But Art, you HATE Blogger! Right?"

Well, I did have some problems with the Blogspot account. I lost posts, there was a huge time lag on everything I did, posting pictures was a major nuisance and I hated the severely limited templates that they offered.

I now believe that the time lag and lost posts were due in part to my stone-age dial-up connection. That's been rectified by getting DSL. Which I'm using now - ahead of schedule!
It was also due to the slow speed of the overtaxed Blogspot content servers which I've fixed by getting my own speedy server from GoDaddy. Same with pix, they're on my server now, so all I has to do is links to 'em.

And the best thing is that with my newly acquired HTML chops, I can get under the hood of my Blogger template and generally mess around with some degree of proficiency.

What all this means is that I can have the ease of using Blogger's Dashboard, which I've always liked, and let them take care of the archiving and posting and whatnot and, at the same time, utilize the speed of my own web server and my new DSL connection. I can also make the site look like I want it to and have all the techno benefits of a full fledged content management package (automated comments, permalinks, backlinks, rss feeds, etc.) without the hassle of worrying about write permissions, MySQL databases, runtime conflicts and scripts.

The best of both worlds.

That is to say that all this is is one big compromise. Hopefully it will work and it will appear to you as a relatively seamless transition. After all, I wouldn't want to scar your little psyches or anything.

Next week we'll see.