Progress Report: Slow but Steady

The work to transition this here blog-like thing from Movable Type to WordPress has been mostly tedious, occasionally fascinating, and often frustrating. I sometimes feel like I’m a complete newbie trying to learn how to create a website by trial and error. But I’m also mostly happy with the way things are unfolding.

I was able to import all of the archived entries from the previous platform into WordPress, but that’s where the real work began. That import brought an additional 3,000 posts into the current site…and I don’t want all of them. Many topics that I thought were worthy of commenting are no longer relevant, or no longer fit into what I want the Gazette to be, i.e. something that’s fun and/or informative, and rarely too serious.

So, I started winnowing the old posts. I deleted almost every post that was political in nature (why did I ever think I was qualified to be a pundit?) or that dealt exclusively with local issues (“local” being primarily those related to Midland, Texas, the birthplace of the Gazette). I deleted posts that referred to “of the moment” memes or news, and those whose primary purpose was to promote or recognize other blogs, almost all of which are no longer active.

The end result was the deletion of more than 2,500 of those old articles.

I readily admit that this is a project of vanity. I mean, there’s no logical reason for anyone to be interested in my ramblings from, say, June of 2004 — even though this one that puts the phenomenon of synethesia into a spiritual context is, frankly, awesome — but on the other hand, that could be said about everything I write.

Anyway…now that the content has been imported to the new software, I can begin to devote some time to the cosmetics and usability of the site. There won’t be anything too dramatic, and I’m kinda enjoying the new simplicity of this layout. But if you have any suggestions or feedback on how the Gazette now looks or works, please feel free to leave it in the comments. ¡Muchas gracias!

By the way, the photo at the top of this page is what WordPress refers to as a “featured image.” It’s supposed to enhance or support the content of the post. However, since we pride ourselves on Content Free© blogging, we’ll just be satisfied to have a pretty picture up there.