It took a little while1 but I finally moved No634 to an independent host. The experience reminded me a lot of my greymatter days in middle school.2
The difference between wordpress.com to an independent host is akin to renting an apartment vs. owning a house. When you own a house you can do whatever you want.3 It’s just a matter of figuring out how to do things…and I’ve spent the past few hours figuring things out.
There were a few surprises:
- Links: My link categories did not import, so I had to re-categorize my 200+ links. Yes, this took a minute1, and there are plenty of mistakes. I promise. So if your website is in the wrong category, (e.g. 1L vs. 2L) please drop me a note or comment here. Also, there is now a separate link category for UK & Canadian blogs.4
- Youtube: WordPress.com used a special code to embed youtube links, which (of course) doesn’t work outside of wordpress. So, all (50) of my video posts were malformatted. Fetching the right embed codes took a minute.1
- Themes aren’t what they used to be! Hosting my own blog means that I have unlimited control over the design. I used the “Pride” theme by WP Designer, but I wanted to change the color, so I had to recreate every discrete image of the design.5
I’m happy with the move and redesign. Although, I’m done fixing things for now.
1 Forever, actually. Mentally, I was this kid.
2 Read: Long nights of diet coke and coding. GreyMatter is early CGI-based blogging software, similar to WordPress.
3 Obviously, anything that’s legal. Even the new host has rules (no warez sites, porn, etc.)
4 So don’t scream at me thinking that I unlinked you. Thanks. If I actually left your link out, please contact me.
5 This was tedious. For example, the search box involves 4 separate images. I also had to go into the CSS and change all of the color codes. Bleh. I think I’m the only person caught messing with CSS at the neighborhood Gay Cafe…