Hi, friends. I got the insatiable urge tonight to completely migrate the site over to WordPress. Unlike some switchers, I’ve completely broken the rules. RSS is broken, old links are broken, and I’m even using the default freakin’ template.
I mean, hey, it’s a blog, right? What’s the fun of having it if I can’t break it every now and again? 
Anyway, I’ll probably be fixing these things on an ongoing basis. Let me know what you’d like to see fixed and I’ll try to take care of it. I’d love to give some first impressions of WP, but, frankly, this isn’t the first time I’ve played with it. The user interface is very well done, and doesn’t have that eerie sense of abandonment that the MovableType interface had.
You’ll also notice that the Links have been integrated into the main blog. I realized that a separate Links blog just wasn’t working out. The few that knew to read it recognized that the site was updated on a regular basis, but I think it was a real turn-off to a lot of folks. Links are also now open to commenting, which I think will help with the community feel of the site.
The migration, by the way, was a piece of cake. WP imported both sets of blog entries just fine. I did a bit of SQL magic to work around the MT hackery I cooked up on the backend. Man, if I’ve learned anything about software with Movable Type, it was this: if a piece of software won’t do what you want, don’t kludge together a clever workaround that will end up sucking the life out of you later. The template hacking I did in Movable Type did make posting Links easy, but, in the long run, made the site conceptually difficult to keep straight in my head. Every time I went to change something on the backend, I had to jump through conceptual loopholes in order to remember how I’d set it up in the first place. In other words, it wasn’t obvious, and it wasn’t simple. I’ve already got enough cognitive dissonance to worry about without having my blog software introducing more.
Nice.
WP is a great piece of software … i’m actually in the process of migrating my site from plone to it and gallery right now … as a holding place fore when my software is finallly done
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I’m really kinda surprised you left the default look up without any modifications at all.
Hey Mike! Yeah, WP has shown some /serious/ world-rocking potential. I figured I may as well get on the bus.
I’m not a big fan of the default look–it’s okay, but doesn’t really say “Ken & Sarah,” you know? I’ll be changing it over time, but I just wanted to get the site up and running.
Sure I could have kept this behind a wall until I was ready to unveil it in a momentous, er, unveiling. But, frankly, I think that would be taking this site far too seriously.
I’m not sure i’d hire someone who threw away an entire website design because they were suffering from too much cognitive dissonance to remember how they built it in the first place.
That said, we’re I a company, I would hire you. I’m just sort of making a point about how you present yourself w/ this entry.
In the meantime, I recommend customizing your template asap. People are going to look at your blog if it’s in any way accessible from your resume. Considering the fields you are aiming for, it’s worth taking the time to make it another part of your portfolio.
Hey Ryan. You’ve definitely hit the nail on the head there. I did kick around the potential impact of suddenly reengineering our site for its own sake. Truth be told, though, I just needed to take a break and do something technical and enjoyable–to play, as the auther of The Hacker Ethic might put it. Hunting for a job can be a maddening experience if you’re not careful to STOP every now and again. So, that’s what I did.
That said, I actually have a plan put together to be systematic about the job search, so–strangely enough–I might actually have a bit of time freed up to mess with the site. Expect changes constantly.
As far as presentation to potential employers is concerned, I’m going to try to direct them to the Simplificate site. Unfortunately, it looks exactly like this one since it’s the default WP template, too. So, redesigning that will actually be a higher priority than this site.
Oh, Ryan, just an afterthought: better to have cognitive dissonance and key learnings over an experimental site I built because I was pushing the architectural envelope of Movable Type than to have it over work that’s actually deployed and being used by a client.
Ken,
I completely understand the desire to throw it away. (i.e. my former blog)
And good point on the target of the dissonance thing. I found it insanely hard to grok at first, but once the sentance clicked, I agree. Most of the things I do are because I want to resolve dissonance. I think that probably applies to most people.
I really liked the layout of your old MT site design, looking forward to seeing what you can do with WP. WFIW, I chose B2evolution for my blog because I found it to be very customizable and the support community is large, in case you get stuck in the middle of a hack. And, laughably (or predicatably) I haven’t had the time to complete the customizations that I have in mind.