It's Time - Changes Underway

Well, the time is upon us.

The Rundown, we're a-changing: The Rundown is moving to its own sub-domain off The Weirding and the template (design and layout) is changing. It is going to blend better with the overall site, have more features and functions (and be easier to access and use), better navigation - the works.

I set-up a test blog over to which I have been copying & pasting the portions of this template I want to keep - as well as playing with color and font schemes and etc. - for several weeks now. There may be some issues when I change the template, which is why I keep mentioning it; hopefully everything will go smoothly, but I want you to be well-aware of what's going down just in case. Knock wood, there shouldn't be any problems moving to the new sub-domain (there haven't been with any of the others), but in any case, you will still be able to access any and all posts from this address - even the new ones (posted after the move).

In fact, I guess I can go ahead and tell you this now, seeing as how I have a lot of it well underway: the "big, new approach" I decided on is one that I started to do to begin with: a kind-of hashed-together CMS (Content Management System). That is to say, I am fully-integrating the blogs into the website in order to handle the text-based information.

Seeing as how what I do is largely text-based (reading, tabletop pen & paper RPGs, reviews, etc.), it is much easier to manage and handle this way. I considered doing this from the beginning (which is partly the reason I chose a .NET), but I love webdesign and there are specific things I want to do that I could not have accomplished with a full CMS package. Not to mention that I already know HTML and didn't want to learn an entirely new language/system. But once the blog packages started catching-up, it finally became feasible for me to use them for the text stuff - which is great, because it is so much easier to manage and present (think of it as a shell program for the text portions of the site).

Of course, this is a huge undertaking, and I cannot afford to set aside, like, an entire day just for this, so I am going to have to do it a little at a time and things may get funky. I am a piecemeal sort of guy, and not just with the things I do online: I wash some of the dishes while the coffee brews in the morning, then some later in the day; I clean and mop the bathroom one day and the kitchen another, or I will clean one of them one day and the other another and mop them both on yet another day; on down the line.

For the most part, this works for me - I live alone and I am my own boss - things do get done, they just rarely get done quickly; on the other side of that same coin, almost nothing ever gets finished. I am always washing dishes because they're never completely done; I am always mopping and cleaning rooms because, by the time I get done with one, it's time to do the other again.

So, once every few months or so, I drop everything and knock it all out. It stays that way for all of maybe three days - which is why I am a piecemeal-kinda guy. This is why things are always being talked about, but rarely finished.

But - and this is the subject of an entirely other entry - also because this is a blog, not a news site, and I enjoy babbling about what I am up to. It isn't just to "connect" with y'all (though there is that) or keep you guys informed as to what's up - it's because I live alone and basically live online, so I sometimes like to take a break from actual work and just chew the fat for a bit.

If you wake-up and things are completely different, I have already started and just bear with me; otherwise, I will be starting tomorrow night. I will try to complete as much as I can in the wee hours o' the morning, so there's little disturbance (it will be like Christmas - without all the crack), but I have so many things going that I am trying to make it all as smooth as possible by finishing most of it before you ever see it. Hopefully, I will be able to just upload the finished template and go from there.

Just be prepared in case things get dicey and I apologize on the front-end, if they do.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008