Look At Me!
by John Walker on Feb.15, 2009, under General
What the blazes? What is this? Something new? Something that makes you want to touch my face? Yes, yes it is. It’s a whole new website, new in every conceivable way, apart from the bit where the content’s exactly the same as my previous site.
I’ve been at botherer.cream.org for six years last month. And it was a fine pleasure to be a part of the ice.cream.org empire. Ice, you need to know, was and likely still is the internet’s only 100% advertising-free server. Among the many great sites it hosts, none contain banner ads, flashing Flash monstrosities, or popping up demons. It’s the electronic child of my good friend Nick Mailer, and squats in the warm surroundings of the Positive Internet Company. They are, sincerely, the finest internet hosts you could hope to use.
I’m pleased to say this new address – www.botherer.org (doubleyous optional) – is also hosted at Positive, this time sneakily piggybacking on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, the PC gaming site I’m so very proud to be a part of. And here I will stay, hopefully for at least another six years. I’m not a big fan of making people change their RSS feeds and bookmarks, so hopefully you’ll forgive me this one time. I shall be updating here from now on – botherer.cream.org is beautiful, but dead.
There are, inevitably, still a few bits and pieces to tweak on this site. For some reason the posts below are claiming they have no comments. They do, they’re all there. In fact, everything from the old site is here, including the untitled scraps from my blog-before-that. I also have ambitions of having a static front page for this site, with the blog on a link, but I cannot fathom a way of getting WordPress to let me do this. If anyone knows, I’d appreciate any tips Got this figured out now – will fix soon.
My reason for wanting a front page is to try and tidy up the ridiculously varied content I put up here. As my friend Kim pointed out the other day, it’s a strange place – there’s three angry rants about MMR, and then below that a snowman with his intestines hanging out. The excellent buttons at the top of the page go a long way toward at least letting people filter appropriately, and I will attempt to make more judicious use of ‘categories’ in future. If I can figure a front page, then it will be even more organised.
The last things to say are an enormous thank you to the lovely Richard Cobbett, who once again has patiently helped me to get my blog working. He is able to identify when I’ve somehow deleted the vital ‘>’ that keeps the entire internet online, and calmly tells me how to put it back. And to give an equally huge thank you to Johnathon at Posi, who is so ludicrously generous with his spare time, has rescued Rock, Paper, Shotgun at 4 in the morning too often, and so very kindly did the hard work arranging for this site and the blog to exist at all. People are so very often very awesome.
February 15th, 2009 on 00:53
http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_a_Static_Front_Page
There you go, hope you find it useful. :)
February 15th, 2009 on 01:04
New site very shiny.
That’s the second glowing reference I’ve seen to Positive Internet in quick succession about the place; shall have to remember that the next time someone asks me which hosting provider they should go with.
May I beg for new Brian guides now?
February 15th, 2009 on 01:16
Snazzy design. And you owe me the 10 seconds it took me to swap out RSS feeds. I’ll take payment in interesting writings.
February 15th, 2009 on 01:31
Just in case anyone is syndicating you through LJ I’ve made a feed for it: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/johnwalkerblog/
Just doing my bit to keep the internets a happy place.
February 15th, 2009 on 03:00
Hurray for people!
Tis indeed looking very snazzy, and all my links and the like are being updated as I type. Carry on the excellent work.
February 15th, 2009 on 05:13
Hurray indeed!
White text on black is a lot easier on the eyes. Don’t let those paperist hooligans tell you otherwise.
February 15th, 2009 on 08:35
Richard Cobbett is a helpful, knowledgable chap, isn’t he? New site looks good!
You should update the old site with “you smell” now that everyone’s changed their RSS feeds. You’ll offend one silent, lonely lurker. He’ll probably cry because it’s true.
February 15th, 2009 on 13:24
At that moment, the Piemaker felt a mixture of happiness and trepidation.
“Why is it always a mixture…”
February 15th, 2009 on 14:25
Just so you know, your button to the rss feed is missing a ‘:’ after the http. The rss button in the address bar in firefox3 still works, so yay.
Good luck with the new site.
February 15th, 2009 on 17:46
I’m not sure what a paperist is, but I’m going to go ahead and label people who find it uncomfortable to read white text on a black background as “people with normal eyes”. It must be so since I am a vocal member of this group. Dark grey, brown, fine, anything but black. It hurts! Especially if you immediately transition to another page with black text on white background. Ow!
February 15th, 2009 on 18:00
Stop being such a massive wimp! (Although, yes, it totally messes up your brain when you go to a black text/white background site right after – that’s part of the fun!)
February 15th, 2009 on 18:12
So the best thing to possibly do is make every page flash to Wikipedia before flashing back here. Thus causing eye to brain explosions!
February 15th, 2009 on 18:51
I take it that means you are politely declining to accommodate my request?
February 15th, 2009 on 18:55
Unless you’re offering to redesign the website for me, probably not.
February 15th, 2009 on 19:02
(just joking, didn’t really expect you to. I guess I’ll live.)
February 15th, 2009 on 19:52
Man, I just happened to notice the last sentence in the “Let’s hold hands” header. That wasn’t there before was it? Oh the ignominy!
February 15th, 2009 on 19:56
It was there before, yes : )
February 17th, 2009 on 17:13
Hey John, just dropping by to say hello :) Nice layout! Looking very good, and I’m looking forward to keep on reading your great work.
Regards,
~Diogo (another illustrious unknown from RPS).