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.

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.

Welcome . . . again.

Welcome to the newer Just Jason, a blog devoted to everything about my life. It looks almost identical to my previous blog, as it was meant to, except this time I'm having Blogger host all the posts. I decided to finally go this route so I can take advantage of some of their new features, like Labels.

Labels are exactly like categories and in order for me to easily use categories; I needed to make this dramatic change. What kept me from making this change sooner was the confining HTML editor. I didn't understand how I could edit the HTML to incorporate my design. As you can see, I've done a pretty good job. However, there are a couple of nagging things that aren't worth worrying about.

This is the first of my blogs to make the switch, but I am working on transferring all my blogs over. But, there are some downsides to this; I lose all my previous posts. This isn't as bad as it sounds; I have them all backed up but you won't be able to access them anymore. I was thinking about starting this blog over anyway, to begin fresh and not weighted down with history.

That's the story so far. I hope you stick with me as I attempt to breathe new life into this old blog.