7 Comments

Site Updates and Move to WordPress

Oct 15, 2007
by

I’ve been offline for the most part since last Tuesday when Anna and I had our first child, Mary Hudson Harrelson (yes, it’s a double name in true Southern fashion).

However, I wanted to let you all know that there are going to be a few more big changes before ReveNews is back to the point where I want it to be. When we relaunched last month in September, I was hoping to recapture the buzz and energy that once made this site a special place. It looks like we’re quickly getting to that point.

Nonetheless, I’ve been more than disappointed in MovableType 4, which powers ReveNews. It’s slow, buggy, quirky, lacks simple things like a blogroll function and doesn’t meet the needs for either the bloggers here or those participating in the conversations (there’s not even a way to block anonymous commenters without requiring TypeKey authorization by all commenters… ugh).

That being said, we’re switching to WordPress. Now that all the old data from the last 10 years is nicely packaged and, for the most part, easy to move I think it’s time to make the move. Why didn’t we do this initially? Quite simply, MT 4 worked much better to get all the data from the previous MT 3 and forum setups moved over. Now that it’s done, moving to WordPress will be much easier.

You hopefully won’t notice much in the way of differences until the move is made (sometime early next week as I’m moving over the custom made theme here, etc to WordPress this week). I’m confident that WordPress will be a much much better platform for all of us (bloggers, commenters and readers) as we move ReveNews into its second decade.

Thanks for your patience. And if you’ve sent me an email in the last week, I promise to get back to you asap between feedings, burpings and changings-

Sam

Filed under: Sounding Off
  • Beth Kirsch

    Sam!!!!

    I'm so happy for you and Anna. I bet Mary is beautiful. ;-) Send out photos. ;-)

    Much happiness and joy!

    Cheers

    Beth

  • http://www.onenetworkdirect.com Todd Crawford

    First! Just kidding.

    Congratulations on the new baby and thanks for keeping us posted on the site updates. You are doing a great job Sam.

  • http://www.rainmakerinteractive.com Bob Chieffo

    Sam,
    Congrats again on becoming a Dad. It’s truly the most wonderful life and perspective changing thing that can ever happen. (example: Did you notice how REALLY aware you were of all the other cars near you as you drove MH home?)

    WORDPRESS!!! YIPEEEE!!! You have no idea the frustrations I’ve heard folks tell be about trying to comment on articles. (then again, you probably do!).

    Awesome move Sam. This is going to help big time!

    ~Bob

  • http://www.websponsorzone.net/ wsz

    What? You spent an entire week offline, just because of a little thing like the arrival of your first child? What kind of weird priorities do you have?

  • http://www.volodymyrzablotskyy.com Vlad

    Sam,

    Congratulation and congratulation- on both Mary Hudson and moving to WordPress. Even after having one of my WordPress sites hacked, I think it is the best platform.

    Besides, with WordPress is much easier to take down those "nofollows" :) , is it not?

  • http://www.cumbrowski.com Carsten Cumbrowski

    Hey Sam, again congrats to your child (this time was I quick and not one of the last, thanks to Facebook and twitter hehe)

    I am crazy busy too, new company creation and all that. You might noticed that I blog a little less than usual. I am now back to my amount of blogging from last summer duh.. hehe

    Yeah, MT4 is a pain in the a.., especially the time it takes to save an entry. You can go and do something else in the meantime. But there are a lot of other things that are a pain… we talked about that a couple times already. Good decision to switch to WordPress. I am looking forward to it, but hope that the downtime will be shorter this time and the loss of data smaller.

    Wsz: answer: "the right ones"

    Cheers!
    Carsten

  • http://www.pubmatic.com Rajeev Goel

    Sam,
    Congratulations on your first-born!! a very exciting milestone in life. hope you enjoyed the one week of "time off" ;) )