More updates to the Skillful Means site – Under Construction

I have made some more updates to the new blog site.  Hopefully, they have not been too disruptive, but along with the changes there has been some things that have broken.  I’m hoping that these changes will not be too much of an annoyance and will allow for more useful functionality in the upcoming days and months.

Details of the change…

For those of you interested in the details of the changes that I have made to the blog and why I made them I will described them here.

As of Saturday, this site has changed practically completely under the covers.  Although the version of the WordPress software that it runs on is the same, and the template and customizations all hopefully are the same, I have had to change some other things in order to get some of the features that I have wanted for the blog.  I basically had to wipe and reload all of the data and photos and replace it all in order to get the different features. 

There will be three Skillful Means “sites” up and running  for the next few days: the original, in the public WordPress site, the newer improved site that I had started up a couple weeks ago (which has been moved to another URL in the transition), and this one (the permanent site).  Once I make sure all of the changes have been brought over to this newest site, the last site will be deleted to make room for other fun things.

Even more detailed…

One of the main reasons for the wipe-and-load operation was to reset how the blog was generating dynamic URL’s for its web pages.  This site and the original WordPress site have URL’s that are created dynamically based on the date of when a specific article was posted as well as the name of the specific post.  When I originally moved all of the content from the original site to the last site I had not known of the option to change the URL format.  I thought it was a configurable option that could be made after the conversion process.  Well, it wasn’t.  So, for a short while we had URL’s based on a key number.  This has changed so if you have made any links, shortcuts, or favorites to the site in the last couple of weeks, they will no longer work.

Why Did I Care? – Why Change?

Well, there are a couple reasons why some blog owners would care about the generation of URL’s based on date and subject. One reason for caring is that Google indexes blog content better for searches when content URL’s are generated in this way.  The better Google indexes the more users it can potentially bring to a web site.  This wasn’t really my main reasons for the change although the thought did come to my mind. 

The larger issue for me was that content from the original blog had self-referential links (which I had made).  These links used the date and subject format of URL.  Well, when I converted to the new site (without date subject URL format), it made the process of changing these links from the old original site to the new one very manual and very error prone.  By converting the whole site, one last time, but this time with the proper URL format, it should give me the option of an automated fix to those links in the articles.  When I make that final fix, those links will no longer point to the old original Skillful Means site, but will point to the correct site, this one.

Blog Satisfaction?

Why is this important?  Well, I thought would one day get rid of the old original WordPress site all together.  If I wipe that original site away, and this new site has links to it, well, the readers of this site would have a bunch of dead links to contend with.  I don’t know about you but dead links tend to annoy me a little, so I figure I would give it my best shot to see if I could make the transition a little more clean. 

Awwww Factor….

Plus, I really love my readers.  I certainly don’t want to annoy them with too many quirks on the site if I don’t have to.

Yes, updates like this are a pain…

I’m hoping that this will all work out as planned.   If you see any bugs or weirdness drop me a line.  I’m slowly fixing a lot of things that I had already fixed the first time around.  There were many things that I changed so I’m sure I have missed a few.  I don’t plan on changing the links to the other site for a few weeks out, so at times you may be directed to the old site.  I’m not planning to delete the old site until I made all the links point back here, so there will be two Skillful Means sites out there for a while. 

This site will have all the new content.

Confusing?

Hey I just typed it, and I’m confused.  In any case, all should be ok with the world even with this confusion.  If you accidentally get redirected to the old site, it is no big deal really, as long as you find the content you wanted.  Just come’on back to this site!

Thanks for your patience.