version what, 5.0.alpha?

1 June 2006

version what, 5.0.alpha?

In my case, posting the versions of my website might be helpful. My obsessive need to tinker has gotten me in trouble again. I hope that this time will turn out better than some others.

Hello! You may have noticed some changes around here. Sidebars! Search boxes! Blogrolls! Cats and Dogs living together!

Madness, I tell you.

Anyhow, the short version is: I’m rearranging furniture. (It’s what I do.)

The slightly longer version is:

  • Having used Textpattern for the last year on my son’s site, I’ve come to like it much more than Movable Type, the tool that’s been driving logjam and flotsam & jetsam.
  • Gallery is harder to use than Flickr. Sorry, but it’s true. Gallery has a ways to go to catch up.
  • Wikis are changing how I work on the web. I’m moving a lot of this site into my private wiki, and am taking the opportunity to clean house.
  • I wasn’t blown away by WordPress; it seemed like a step up from MT, but not anything really different. Maybe I’m just addicted to Textpattern’s Textile and Referrer elements.
  • I appear to have a terminal case of stupid when it comes to upgrading.

I debated leaving the new site on stage for a while longer while I polished it, but - you know what? Those sorts of controls are for work. I’m not so attached to version 4.x of my website that I can’t toss it back into alpha and make my changes right in production.

So, there are changes. Some of them are obvious - a whole lot more stuff on the sidebars. I have no idea if I’m going to keep them or not. Some are a little less obvious, as the backend moves from SSI to php. Some of the big changes:

  • logjam, my former informal weblog, has been replaced… er, moved… er… well, it’s probaly going to stay where it is, and new posts will appear here, on website root. I may move the posts into Textpattern, but my initial attempts at importing them didn’t work, and I’m not going to copy over 1000 posts by hand.
  • flotsam & jetsam, my rambling autobiography, is still where it has always been. I don’t know yet if it’s going to move and migrate into the main site, or stay where it is on Movable Type. I have been much happier with Flotsam the way it is, so I don’t have much incentive to change it. The only reason to move it would be to centralize everything, and that’s hardly a compelling reason.
  • input has been effectively absorbed by the book list on the left and the “words which will make me leave the party” category in the posts. I don’t really watch TV or movies anymore, so I’ll just keep the booklist going.
  • Various other informational pages (about, contact, etc.) will get rolled into Textpattern eventually.

Comments are, for the first time in years, open for business again. Let me know what you think and what you’d like to see.

Update 15 June 2006: New look? Not so much. Post on the subject forthcoming.

Site Log

This is: brett's logjam → version what, 5.0.alpha?.