New and Exciting!
Wowzers. I’ve been working on this platform switcharoo for about two weeks now, and even though there are still a half-dozen tiny things I’d like to add/edit, I wanted to make the big debut anyway. The reasons for abandoning movable type weren’t that serious; it only made me want to scream and pull out my hair every. Single. Day.
I haven’t tried the newest version of Movable Type, so maybe I’m missing out on something fabulous, but after spending barely five minutes reading the installation guide I decided that unless it had crazy magical powers that would enable my site to wake up and make me sunny side up eggs and toast every morning, it just wasn’t worth it. (Side note: coincidentally, Heather and Jon of the infamous dooce.com have moved on and away from MT as well, so I feel like my decision is totally justified.) Admittedly, I chose WordPress because of how many themes are readily available. One of my biggest beefs with Movable Type was that if I didn’t want to spend five years designing a layout and translating it into html, I’d either have to pay someone else to do it or use the default templates of wedding cakes and baseball bats. Lame.
The layout that I’m currently featuring is a heavily edited theme called Limau Orange by Bob of blogohblog.com. I did a quick search on wordpress.org for simple themes and found Limau about two minutes later. Can I say that I’m in love? Not with Bob and not with this theme in particular, but with WordPress overall. It kicks ass. If WordPress and Movable Type were on a playground together, WordPress would give Movable Type a big wedgie and then steal his lunch. Everything, just like searching for layouts, is fast. It only took a little over twenty minutes to install and I learned how to edit and add everything you see here on the same night. My only reason for taking so long to show GAS in all of her new wordpressed glory is because I couldn’t decide exactly how I wanted to present it. There are so many options! So many widgets! So many plugins! My photos automatically have that cute little gray border! That little bookmark button at the bottom of each entry makes me hot! I can set up an RSS feed in thirty seconds! My head is spinning!
One hang-up I’ve always had with this blog and every blog before it is that I get tired of the atmosphere quickly, and if I’m tired of looking at the atmosphere then my creativity and urge to write go down the drain. With WordPress I can switch the look of everything here in a matter of seconds and BAM, it’s a whole new look with the same great taste. I love it. This way I can keep up with my content and my readers without getting bogged down with aesthetics, and people like Gregory T., a man who emailed me back in September 2006 because he was sad that my old .com was down, won’t have to wait an entire year and two months before I get the message. (Gregory T., if you’re reading this, I send my deepest e-apologies. Thank you for being such an attentive visitor.)
One of the bartenders at work today jokingly (I think) asked me to be his girlfriend in January. He said, “Come on, a new year, a new life, and a new boyfriend!” And while the "life", "year" and "boyfriend" parts are all a little nauseating, the "new" part is not. So here’s to that, starting with GAS! Now go and bookmark your little butts off so you can be as turned on as I am.