Ch-ch-changes
The past week I’ve been working behind the scenes to transfer my web hosting and registration to DreamHost, and switch over to Movable Type. The domain name servers have just been changed, which means the rebelprince.com URL will start pointing to my new space over at DreamHost, but it takes as much as a couple of days for the change to propagate… across the universe! Bwah ha ha. Or something like that. (There’s something about the word “propagate” that makes me think of viruses. Or world domination. Anyway.) So, if and when you read this on my spiffy redesigned webpage (think “indigo”), then you’re at the new space. If you can’t wait and want a sneak peek, check out the mirror server at http://rebelprince.dreamhost.com.
And so I finally know what Movable Type is, and how it differs from some of the other systems. MT is software that runs directly on your web host server. Installing it is not for the faint of heart. I had to exercise some brain cells I hadn’t used in a few years, like the ones in charge of basic UNIX commands. But surprisingly enough, it all went pretty smoothly.
One thing I like is the integration. MT has built-in comment and e-mail notification functions, which previously I had to pull from other sources. And all the code is customizable, almost so customizable that all the choices can be intimidating, but it’s like learning a new language, one where most of the words look like <$MT…$>. I’ve imported all my old Blogger entries and YACCS comments, but I’ll be publishing them on a continuing basis, since I have to do some quality control to get make sure all the formatting is okay. For example, in the imported comments, where I had typed the HTML code — to get the m-dash (—), the conversion takes it literally, and renders the ampersand too (&dash;), which is icky. It’s going, slowly but surely.
Well, I hope you like all the changes. That’s one small step for Jeff, one giant leap for Rebel Prince.