This weblog has always been run on Conversant, an excellent groupware, weblogging and publishing tool created by Macrobyte Resources. I worked for the company back in 2000, and enjoyed that time immensely, thanks both to the superb people I was surrounded by and the great projects we got to work on together. It was a remarkable place, cranking out some cutting-edge communication software with a completely distributed workforce, spread across several states, countries, and time zones. Alas, we eventually all moved in different directions, though Conversant lived on and continued to grow and to be improved.
And while Conversant has served me personally long and well, I’m finally moving the website off of it and on to Wordpress, a nifty open-source publishing system that lacks some of the really amazing features that Conversant boasts, but which is easier for me to tweak for myself and which has a large and active community of people doing interesting things with it. This is a tough decision, as I’ve invested a lot into Conversant, and am reluctant to let it go, but after dithering about it for a year, finally feel like the time has come for this site. (I’m still using Conversant for some of the applications I’ve developed for our church, and have no plans to move those any time soon.)
I’ve moved a bit of the old content over already, and will be bringing over more as I’m able to get it exported from the old site. The look and feel will likely change regularly for a while as I experiment and settle in to the new digs, so please be patient if you turn up one day and it suddenly looks like MySpace (eww). This too shall pass.
3 Comments
So, like any help with the design? We’re kinda looking for volunteer projects to get me back up to speed on web design and get Cin’s feet wet.
Worpress is an interesting tool so far. The new design co is at Worpress.com (which cost so little as to practically be free). Who hosts you?
Hey Mark! Glad you stopped by. Let me have a few weeks before I start thinking about the design — I’m working on functionality currently. Have you looked at the Sandbox theme for WP? It seems to provide a nice XHTML skeleton upon which to hang CSS designs. I’ll probably move over to it before too long.
I do like the array of plugins and themes for WP. I’d been worrying a bit about how to integrate with FeedBurner, but found a plugin that pretty much just handles it automatically: http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/help/wordpress_quickstart
I’m hosted at Textdrive.com. Since I already had an account set up for myreadinglog.net, it was easy to add another virtual server for this.
Gotcha. Worpress.com is really locked down (no javascript!) so it’s definitely a Just For Now solution. The plugin architecture is fairly awesome.
I saw Sandbox! I downloaded the HTML to play with in Coda, but that’s vacation week stuff. (Next week.)