The Move, Finalized

OK, it looks like everything is done. One final note, if you read this site via RSS and you got some sort of note in your RSS feed directing you here could you either comment here or send me an email? It looks like some of my hacking around with RSS feeds worked such that the old feed URL gives you a message with the new URL, but it's difficult to be certain. Thanks!

The Move

OK folks. I’ve pulled the trigger on some changes, and they should propagate out in about two hours or so. If things go well than many folks will just redirect to the new site. If things go poorly … well here’s a few good things to know.

The blog should be accessible at /blog If it isn’t it will definitely be at /blog. If you want a RSS feed you can get one there.

The existing blog URL at http://www.hiddenjester.com/~tsanders should work, but I can’t test that until the DNS records propagate.

Hopefully this will all go fairly smoothly.

Service Interruption?

Hey folks. I'm hip-deep in ridding myself of this troublesome web server at the moment. I haven't actually decided where the blog will go and whether the archives will actually be online at the end of everything. But I'm planning on making that decision today. I may even pull the trigger on some DNS fun and games soonish and that could mean this here site might disappear. Here's a few notes: 1 ) I'll have a blog somewhere in some format when this is done. 2 ) That somewhere may not be the current URL. It's possible I'll put the blog at the top www domain and remove the vestigial "reserved for development" page. That's not terribly likely because it would restrict my future web development paths. What's more likely is that the blog will end up being a page something like blog.hiddenjester.com and www.hiddenjester.com would remain a simple static page that I could tweak as needed. At any rate here's the key bit to know: if this site goes away for a few days do not panic. If you visit mainly by RSS feeds or a bookmark be sure to set a bookmark at http://www.hiddenjester.com. That will be where I post the newest location of the blog.
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Well that brings matters to a head

WordPress 3.0 is out, and that means something has got to be done about this here blog-a-ma-thingie. I've been thinking about what to do for a while and I've made no decisions but now is your comment window. Obviously I haven't been posting very much lately, partly due to busy-ness and partly it's because it is very surprising how much blogging can be replaced by Twitter. But here's the key bit: I'm tired of being a WordPress admin and I don't need to be hosting my own Apache web server in 2010. There are several suggestions to go from here:
  1. The blog could end with a whimper not a bang, and I simply take it offline.
  2. I could switch to a hosted site somewhere:
    1. I could switch to either something that runs WordPress or something willing to import a WordPress archive to preserve the existing almost 800 entries.
    2. I could switch to something more social/link share-y. This probably means Tumblr, although I haven't looked at it in any depth. This would likely mean there's no place for the existing entries to migrate so this is a cross between end-with-whimper and the preserve-it-all camps.
  3. I suppose somebody could make a cogent argument why I should continue to run my own deal. I don't know what that would be but hey, I'm asking for comments!
I feel a little like I still want some sort of web presence somewhere. I still want to make the occasional post that is too long for Twitter and I'd like to still have a "hub" to link together my Twitter, Flickr, and whatever else I want to put there. The big question to my mind is how much value I assign to migrating the original posts. There's a really interesting discussion here about archiving ephemera. Of course, no matter what I decide I'll make an *archive* of the blog, but is there any responsibility here to keep that stuff online? Does anybody really care what I wrote about Magic The Gathering Sets five years ago? I barely do, I have trouble imagining anyone else does. Please don't take this as any big internet drama. It's just that I don't want to be the guy responsible for keeping current on the anti-spammer technology anymore. It's interesting to me to discuss the value I should put on posts from 2003. There have already been detritus jettisoned from the blog in the past: the first year of the blog pre-Movable Type is still available, but you have to know the URL, and I never did put "Pic-A-Day" back online after some conversion or another (was that on MT? My how time flies!). So part of me says "Hey just figure out what you want from a new site and go find it. Move forward, and nobody cares about the old stuff.", but part of me feels like there is some value in the history, in the continuity. Anyway, sound off if you have opinions!
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