Technobabble

I’m not great technically. I get by. I can learn how to do many things, and I even learned computer programming once upon a time. But these technical giants, they don’t exactly make things any easier, do they?

The past few days I’ve been working on the blog. I’m transferring my domain name over to here, and it seems the registration has transferred too. What worries me, though, is that I also have the gig list domain name with the same host and, according to the dashboard, that redirects to my dianewordsworth.com, even though it points to the gig list on Blogger.

From Sunday, the URL you see at the top of the screen for this blog should read dianewordsworth.com. What worries me is that the gig list may fall over and we’ll have to revert to the Blogger-owned URL until it’s sorted.

Technical support for the current host just called me. They seem to think the gig list will stay where it is and I’ll continue to log in to and manage my account via my email address. However, he was a bit flummoxed too, as he thought the gig list pointed to the website and not the gig list. (Try it. It definitely points to Blogger.)

I’ve had to upgrade from a free WordPress account to a Personal WordPress account. It tried to default to a Business WordPress account, but hey, I can spot these things from a mile away. Especially when they cost more than twice the price.

I’m not at all sure yet what the upgrade gives me, other than the personalised domain name and perhaps the removal of occasional adverts. I suspect it also gives me greater technical support. But aside from that … what else do I get?

I’ll have a look at the themes, see if I get more flexibility there, but it looks unlikely. I think I get more storage. But I don’t think I can add payment buttons or monetise the site.

So, why am I doing this? Why am I closing down the website? Well, to be honest, for simplicity really. To keep as many things as possible in just one place.

The website is made up of frames. It isn’t as easy as the blog to maintain and it has display issues on mobile devices, despite being mobile/tablet-ready.

The blog also allows me to have several different pages now, and I can embed links so that a page will jump straight to a different website (such as for the Alphabet Adventurers, Wordsworth Photography and, if I had it on here, the gig list).

Incidentally, while I’m on the subject, have you visited the Alphabet Adventurers yet/recently? We’re already up to ‘F’ and will soon be on with ‘G’. Go on, nip over. I’ll wait.

😎😎😎

Are you back? Okay …

I can adorn the blog with pictures, slideshows, videos and other graphics, along with badges pointing to my social media sites.

In fact, the blog does pretty much what the website does now, without me having to maintain, or pay for, two separate entities.

Am I making a mistake? Possibly. But you never know unless you try, do you?

(Teaser alert!) On top of this, and amid catching up with the backlog of work, I’m also working on a brand new project. This has mostly come about with the recent changes in the women’s weekly magazine market and relates to short fiction. I’m not ready to do a big reveal yet, but I’m working on it and it requires quite a lot of writing work. (End of teaser alert!)

Please come along and visit the blog after Sunday, to see if anything has changed, but also to look at all the great new features I’ve added … okay, all the pictures and things … And, as ever, please let me know what you think.