Okay, that last post was an attempt to blog a picture from my Flickr account, pure and simple.

I moved this blog to a new server last weekend. I very, very stupidly had my domain name registrar point my domain name to both the old GoDaddy server and the new one, at mwsmedia.com, at the same time. This, of course, caused myriad problems, which are now solved.

EXCEPT…WordPress won’t allow me to upload a picture to my WP space since I moved servers. I have tried setting write permissions on the relevant directories, but I haven’t found the combination yet.

If anybody is familiar with setting WP write permissions from a Mac environment, using Fetch, I’d appreciate some input.

Yeah, so it’s been many months since I’ve updated this blog.

Sorry about that. I guess my main blog/Web 2.0 energies tend to go toward The Word Nerds and its attendant forum.

Tonight I’ve been all obsessed with trying to make the K2 theme for Wordpress work right. It’s not working right. Sidebar modules aren’t doing what they’re supposed to.

So I’m spending all this energy making the shell of this blog work right and look good, and in the meantime there’s nothing in it.

Okay. I’ve got to get myself to just spit out little blog entries without worrying about writing brilliant stuff.

I have been blogging or messing around with this blog (mostly the latter, actually) in just about every free moment this week.

WordPress is very cool software, and I’m starting to feel that I’m getting some control over it, but how many rotating header images do I really need? It took pretty much all of two days to master what I needed to do with the photos in PhotoShop, and now there they are.

Of course, the more I do this the fewer posts I actually put up here. Yikes.

Okay, this is it.

Incidentally, the rotating header photos are from my own little mid-life. Most from home, some from schools where I teach. I may stick others in as the spirit moves me.

Particularly since I spent two days learning how to make the headers.

Okay, you all, I finally did it. I managed to get WordPress installed on my own hosting account, under my own domain name, and here it is. All posts from this one on will be posted in WordPress.

There are still several things that are not “right” about this new scheme. I feel overwhelmed, for example, by all the possibilities. I cannot figure out what I’m supposed to do to upload and post pictures. I am not thrilled with the default template (theme) I’m using as of today, April 23. (In case you’re reading this deep in the future–woooooeeeeeuuuuu–I was using the WP default theme, with a little blueness in the header.)

But these things will come. I am truly amazed at the things I’ve been wanting to do all this time and just couldn’t. This is definitely software written for serious bloggers. I want to be one of those when I grow up…

IMPORTANT NOTE: For all posts prior to this one, “categories” listings point to tags at del.icio.us, using the very clever scheme suggested by Freshblog and Ted Ernst. (Sadly enough, the link to Ted Ernst’s blog on this seems to have died.)

[Actually, Ted has moved his own blog to WordPress, which is why I couldn't find the article. Here it is. Thanks to John, the Freshblog guy, for pointing this out in the comment below.]

From now on, however, the categories will be categories within my WordPress account.

After I’ve settled on a template, I’ll put the del.icio.us categories list back in my navigation bar for awhile. But I’ll start using WP categories right now.

Oh, one other thing: as I’m writing this post, I haven’t yet updated my Feedburner feed. So if you’ve subscribed to it through the feedburner feed, it’s not working yet. I think I’ll drop that link out of my nav bar, since WP supports RSS just fine.

[Edit later on: I have now changed my Feedburner account to point to the new WordPress RSS feed. My stats said I had something like eight subscribers through that feed, so what the hell, I might as well keep it current.]

I am, so far, not the blogger I want to be. I truly intended to blog on a regular (weekly? semi-weekly?) basis, but other things are getting in the way.

And yes, Simran, I realize I am still using Blogger, with the WordPress folder full of goodies still sitting on the desktop of my Macintosh. I just haven’t had the guts/time/will to set up my GoDaddy server space with WordPress. I really, really want to. It will put me in better touch with my blog, and possibly induce me to change to a more interesting template. (At least the set of default templates in WordPress is a bit more interesting than the Blogger defaults.)

Well…soon. I did purchase a nice Moleskine reporter-style notebook (a very cool notebook, used by Moleskine nerds) last week at James Madison University, when we visited there with our daughter. And I have written in that thing.

In fact, I’m going to use notes from that notebook right now to write a blog entry on the changing media landscape. (No, not a rant against the RIAA this time.)

Categories: blogging, blogger, wordpress, moleskine

One other reason I haven’t been blogging a lot lately is that I want to try to migrate my blog from Blogger to WordPress.

I’ve downloaded the WordPress software, and I have my own domain and my own hosting space. When I publish on Blogger, it goes to my domain, davesmidlife.com.

I’m just deathly afraid of losing all my blog posts and comments when I move everything to WP. I’m going to just have to bite the bullet soon and jump in.

I’ve figured out how to use Blogger pretty well, which means I’ve bumped right up against its limitations. I’m ready for something that will give me a bit more control, and I think WordPress is it.

I’ve gotten a little bit of help and advice from Simran in India, who has moved his own blog to WordPress. Maybe I can get him to guide me along the process in the next few days.

Categories: blogging, blogger, wordpress