As you can see, the blog has a new look. It may not be as apparent that the blog is in a new place as well. After five years on my old Movable Type platform, I accepted Inside the Arts founder, Drew McManus’ invitation to move my blog entirely to the Inside the Arts website. I still own the Buttsseats.com domain name and have it directed here so you can keep your bookmarks. Those who subscribe by newsfeed are probably going to have to reset them. I know that some people liked a verbose feed and others preferred a more compact feed and I plan to feature both.
I apologize to those who had difficulties reaching the blog these last couple days. I was having some difficulty getting my domain name to redirect here properly. I appreciate Drew’s patience with my emails urging him to try various settings in an attempt to make things work. There are still a couple things that probably need to be worked out but my intention is to limit such flailing to times of low traffic to the blog.
My primary motivation for moving is difficulties I had getting Movable Type to do what I wanted. It is a very flexible platform for blogging and as such has a lot of settings that can be adjusted. I believe that despite my best efforts in emulating standard settings, there was something set somewhere that precluded the execution of my changes.
Had it just been a matter of cosmetics, I wouldn’t have had a problem but there were problems with comment posting where you would be scolded for not entering the spam prevention password—only you were never given the opportunity to do so unless you previewed your post first. I spent the better part of three weeks playing with various settings to no avail. I believe this new location will provide readers with a much better experience.
My second motivation was based somewhat in envy. Drew McManus is an attentive shepherd for our merry little band of bloggers here. Evey week he sends out tips on how to improve blog posts. Often these tips include information on new plugins and programs available for the WordPress platform Inside the Arts uses. Given I was faced with so much frustration, the proposition of accomplishing my goals at a click of a button was rather seductive. There are also little nifty tools that seek out broken links within entries which will enable me to keep my old entries either up to date or at least bereft of dead links. Months of coveting such luxuries inspired me to move my blog.
I am pleased thus far with the new blogging accommodations and look forward to being able to provide a more informative experience for my readers given the new tools at my disposal.