WordPress.com recently announced a return to their old hosting plans. They basically force upgraded everyone with a paid account a while ago; imagine Netflix introduced 4K and then made everyone pay a little more for it, whether they wanted it or not.
The WP.com upgrade “broke” a little bit of The Stop Button actually. The support experience wasn’t great, ending with “well, if you had a supported theme we could help.” There are something like eight supported themes now. There must be a million WordPress themes out there by now—at least hundreds of thousands.
But there were benefits. Plug-ins, mostly. And I suppose I could run Google Analytics but why. The plug-ins allowed for redirections, which meant I could finally retire superseded posts. The redirection plug-in I’m using is actually a 404 redirect plug-in, so I’m finally able to see all the old links still coming into the site. Going back to the Sandvox days. But also a bunch of old colloquial posts, long since gone. I don’t see the content, just the titles, back when I didn’t just number colloquial posts. I can’t even remember if they were on The Stop Button or if somehow I redirected a separate, just those posts blog. Nine years ago is a lot of time on the Internet; heck, I didn’t even remember I stopped blogging about comics and just talked about them on the Comics Fondle Podcast. I mean, I remembered real quick, but it’s not something I keep in active memory. Or even actively in passive memory.
One of my fears of colloquial blogging is repeating the same anecdote. I’ve got a lot of repeat gimmicks on here, starting with the “anyways,” but there are plenty more. Semi-colons and em-dashes galore could be the site’s subtitle. But telling the same bit about how a novel is a house and a short story is a room, or about how I was supposed to collect anything written for my MFA-era Word Count project, not write deliberately for it. One of the nicest things about media blogging is the endless stream of impetus.
Though I suppose if I did anecdotes in media responses, I’d be in danger of repeating them there. I do not, however, and have no plans to start.
But I have a bunch of plans for the rest of the year; scheduling plans. I’ve already started the new “Swamp Thing” show, and I’ve got the next rerun picked. I’ve decided on a movie emphasis, and I’ve got a big comic one picked out. They’ll alternate Mondays.
I’d thought about a new colloquial column on Mondays, and dreading the thought of it gave me an excellent idea for the movies. It’s still related to my constant attempts to recover the feel of “old-time blogging,” but it’s not as on-the-nose as a column would’ve been.
Thanks to running plug-ins, I’ve spent a handful of months rejiggering the site. The final significant change came in the last couple days. I’m not riding the stats, but I check them enough to balance exertion and outcome. The more automated processes, the better.
I don’t have any writing projects planned for the fall outside blogging. For a while, it seemed like I might. Instead, I’ve found the best modern portable typewriter setup—a Macally Bluetooth keyboard with a slot for devices; no trackpad for distractions; you can do a standing iPad setup the way Steve Jobs intended. All I’m using it for is blogging. It’s swell.
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