Thought I'd welcome you with the classic glassy-eyed, grizzled and casually-dressed blogger pose.
Boy, looking at the shot, you can really that my right eye's significantly higher than my left. All my life I wondered why binoculars never worked for me!
The process of moving the blog and site was a lot smoother than I had hoped.
Last weekend I got all my posts teed up on the old site through yesterday. Then I the first part of the week's spare moments getting my account set up at Squarespace.com and going through all the tutorials. Then I designed the blog page and all the linking architecture that will appear throughout the site (top nav bar, and side bars). Spent a bit of time designing the banner on PowerPoint and then having my colleague Bradd Hayes clean up and size it correctly in Photoshop. By very late Tuesday night I was ready to transform my trial account into a real one. I then exported my entire blog from the old site into a TXT file (37GB) in a matter of seconds, and then uploaded that to Squarespace in a matter of minutes. Then the site took over the job of importing everything into the new site--entries, comments, pix and all links. I woke up Wednesday morning to find it all in place and working fine.
So Wednesday, during breaks, I teed up the first posts for today. I took my time because I was just getting used to the system here, and I'm categorizing all posts for the first time (basically, citation posts versus What Tom is up to posts versus WPR columns versus Esquire Politics Blog posts, etc.) and using tags for the very first time (trying not to accumulate too many or use more than three per).
What I love about the site? The WYSIWYG post-entry window, where the pics go right into the body without you having to make all the code happen somewhere else and then copy it over. The uploading function is very neat and easy to use. I can also embed video (although I will have to learn how), something I will consider off the phone on trips, or maybe--under the right special conditions, right out of my office. I can also set up to blog off my phone, which is making the Droid look more attractive by the day for its physical keyboard.
Something also new and different (meaning an adjustment), but which I think we'll both enjoy: the post entry format comes with a reference field that allows me to type in the URL, title, author, date and pub very quickly. It appears at the bottom of the post now, meaning you'll have to click on it to look it up. That means I need to offer some scant reference in the body so you know what I'm working off, but it presents a cleaner look and it's an easier entry process, much like the graphics now (which I will provide a link on if they don't come from the referenced piece--as before).
Three other new things: 1) recent comments will be listed in the left sidebar; 2) since my quotes won't be highlighted with background but just indented, I'll italicize those; and 3) most important to me, I can actually sked posts into the future on this site, which is essential for my traveling (old site didn't allow).
As before, all comments will be moderated.
Anyway, so that was Wednesday night mostly, and then I spent time getting the left and right sidebars populated--into Thursday. Then Thursday and Friday were non-stop page recreating as I could find time. Watch the top navigation as new pages come online. I'll be at this for weeks before everything's done.
Anyway, here we are and here we'll stay for now.
Feedback appreciated. Just understand that a shake-out cruise is inevitable.
Oh, and note that I did not import any comments made between 5 May and 10 May inclusive. Those are lost to the wind.