Name change + web presense = confusion

Cathy — Fri, 22 May 2009 19:02:43 +0000

I have lots of URLs. And unlike most people, I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. You see in just a few short months I will become a Sullivan. Now that’s great because my intials won’t changem, but what about all my web presences where I am known as “cswenton.” Lets review my plan:

1. Yelp – From the begining, I have been know as “Cathy S.” Great! This will obviously work going forward and a few weeks back I secured the URL alias of cathysull. So my new Yelp URL is now: http://cathysull.yelp.com.

2. Flickr – Now onto Flickr…I have been on Flickr for years now and used swenton as my alias (which is also used in the URL). I checked the availability and cathysull is available. When should I make the switch…

3. Twitter – I secured my handle. Just in case I decide to starting Twittering. http://twitter.com/cathysull

4. cathy.swenton.com – Now onto the precense that brings everything together. What do I do here?

I guess the real question is when to introduce the confusion. Do I wait until September or start now? I think I’ll take the plunge.

The end of an era

Cathy — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:22:48 +0000

So today, I decided to overhaul my website. Back in 2005, I wrote a custom blogging tool for my website. Okay, maybe it wasn’t really an “tool” but it was definitely cool. The admin page consisted of features to create a new post (with tags), edit an existing post, and delete a post. I worked for several weeks on this tool and in the end I was proud of the outcome. I used mySQL to store each post and all associated information about it (date, time, subject, author, etc.). I then wrote a PHP script which I called Feed Builder to generate the mySQL rows (only the most recent 5 or so) into standard RSS XML. From there my feed was readable by almost all RSS readers and my own website of course.

This was awesome! Now speed forward to today. About 3 years and 4 months later, it’s just a pain in the you know what to post anything to my blog. I decided to give WordPress a try. After reading through the hosting features of WordPress.com, I found it was extremely limited in terms of what customization was available. Of course, if you are willing to pay a small fee, you can get some of that customization back. I then discovered WordPress.org. It was like finding my way into Heaven (if I could imagine that for a second). Anyway, self-hosting WordPress sounded like a dream.

So here I am about an hour later after customizing this thing from left to right and top to bottom. I can pull in my Flickr photos, post directly from Flickr (with the photo of my choice), and pull in custom RSS feeds (like my Yelp reviews). Ahhhh, I feel right at home. Now if only I will feel more at ease posting to my own blog. Enjoy.

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Name change + web presense = confusion

The end of an era