A New Design

Another redesign. I know, I tend to redesign this blog more times than I wash my sheets, but I was feeling bummed that my other design wouldn't work and I ended up losing everything when I deleted it off my web-space provider. Maybe it was for the better.

Initially I was going to do something really simple. I was picking the most bland template Blogger had. I wasn't going to make any changes, I was just going to start writing. Then the tinkerer part of me kicked in. I was only going to change the font, and maybe the color of the title. Then it all just snowballed and I added another column, messed around with RSS feeds, included a label cloud, changed how the blockquotes displayed, reworked margins, justified all the text, and added a border among other things.

It sounds like I did a lot of work, but it all came together quickly like it was meant to happen. The whole experience was very satisfying and I'm pleased that I took a moment and built on to the template I chose. In the end I'm excited with the result even though it wasn't the original design I worked so hard to get working a few months ago. The decision ahead of me now is whether or not I completely start over with the posts.

Are You Reading Me?

It's weird to learn that people other than family and friends have read my blog. It's an uncomfortable feeling that my opinions are out in the Internet ether for the entire world to read and comment. Regardless of how uncomfortable it feels I've placed myself out there for a reason; I wanted an open forum, a street corner on the Internet where I can stand atop a soapbox and talk about anything I wanted.

It's interesting, if I were out in public, standing on a soapbox, rambling on about the Barry Manilow concert I attended, I probably wouldn't get much attention. However, on the Internet someone is willing to stop and listen to what I have to say. I'm surprised to tell you that that is exactly what happened. Someone stopped and listened while I rambled on about my Barry Manilow experience.

I was checking my "Google Juice" on Google yesterday and came across Barry Fun: A positive, fun blog, about Barry Manilow. One particular post had links to different reviews of the Portland Barry Manilow concert including mine. In addition, the blogger used my concert ticket graphic, which would have been a point of contention if the blogger were stealing bandwidth by hotlinking. Plus, it's a Barry Manilow site, I had a scan of a Barry Manilow ticket; it's all good.

Then I found that "James Doogin", a friend of mine, Dugg my post called "First TV Show to DVD". It was then Dugg a few more times by other people. It never gained critical mass to make it popular, but this blog is so diverse that it's unlikely going to make me famous, unless a lot of people really like hearing about showers and sandwiches. I'm sure there aren't many out there.

About Who? About Me?

I keep reading about how to increase my blog traffic. One of the primary ways is including an "About" page giving some insight into who I am and what my blog is all about. They also say adding a picture will supposedly gain me some credibility, as people like to see about whom they are reading.

This is all very interesting and I suppose I could add a picture of myself, but why do I need an about page on a blog that is all about me? My whole blog is an about page! What could I possibly say that I haven't already covered in a previous post? Should I provide you with my name? Age? Gender? Maybe my location? If you haven't already figured it out, you likely know my name and gender as I don't know many women named Jason. If you didn't, well, you do now.

However, the idea of über-personalizing my page with a severe amount of personal information is an intriguing one. I am a very complex person with personal policies that I would love to make public, not only for your enjoyment, but also to keep them straight in my own mind.

I suppose the question is do I care if I increase my traffic. Not really, this blog was never meant to be for anyone but me. I'm certainly not making money from it as you can see from the lack of annoying Adsense links and banners littering the site. Do I like it when people visit and read what I have written? Sure! I certainly cater to whoever might be reading it by trying to make my posts as interesting as possible. Too many times I have come across painfully boring blogs and I undoubtedly don't want to be a member of that webring. To remedy that, I attempt, if the posts warrants, at being clever, charming and amusing as much as possible. Only you can tell me if I succeed.

Me vs. NetSol & Yahoo!

Some things are best left alone as I discovered the hard way today and it all stems from the switch to Blog*Spot. Let me give you a little history on the subject. I purchased my domain name, justjason.com, from Network Solutions (www.netsol.com) then the Small Business web-hosting package from Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com). Yahoo! completely tied justjason.com to the web-hosting package, as they naturally should. This is where Blogger (www.blogger.com) would be publishing my blog.

Fast-forward to present day where you find me wanting to convert my blog to Blog*Spot. Blog*Spot is the service that Blogger uses to host peoples blogs for free. I mentioned some of the reasons in a previous post entitled Welcome . . . again. Now all I needed to do was point justjason.com to my Blog*Spot address and everything would be fine.

I visit Network Solution's website and purchase a service that will forward justjason.com to my Blog*Spot address. The service costs $12 a year and I currently use the service for my three other URLs which all point to files hosted on Yahoo!. I'm very hesitant because DNS (domain name server) settings need to be changed in order for the forwarding to work, and anytime setting changes need to take place it all becomes very complicated very fast.

Against my better judgment, I purchase the service and point justjason.com to my Blog*Spot address. A few hours later I check my website and everything that could have gone wrong did. Not only did my website not come up, but none of my websites did and none of my Mom's websites did. All the connections that connected my domain and my web host were broken, completely interrupting service.

So why did everything go down if the only change was to justjason.com? As I mentioned earlier, Yahoo tied justjason.com to my web-hosting package. This means that all graphics and html pages hosted by Yahoo! had the justjason.com domain attached. Since Network Solutions changed the DNS settings for justjason.com it was no longer pointing to any of my files on Yahoo, therefore nothing was being displayed.

I manually change the DNS settings on Network Solutions back to Yahoo!, but then decide to call Yahoo! and have them reset the DNS settings as well. I call Network Solutions and cancel the web forwarding service. I hope that sometime within the next three days everything will be back to normal.