Hi friends!  I know, it’s been almost a year since I moved to California and I’ve barely posted anything in my blog other than show announcements and other self-promotion.  Truth is I’m sick of my website, I want to wreck it and start over with a different layout.  I want to make it less confusing and more user-friendly for first-time visitors.  I want to simplify the front page, make my basic info and discography a lot more front-n-center, and provide more-noticeable links to my pages at MySpace, Drag City etc.  I want to move the messy blog stuff to its own set of sub-pages so I won’t feel like I’m cluttering everything up with my drivel.  I want to figure out a way to better integrate all the content I’m making elsewhere on the web — Flickr photos, Twitter postings, del.icio.us links etc.  So this is what’s going through my head in regards to my website.  Sick of it!!

The new version of my blogging system (the very wonderful and versatile ExpressionEngine) has some cool new features to make life a little easier, i.e. you can now create static pages for an "about me" page or what have you.  Well, you could that before too, but it was a kludge.  Now you can set any blog post to be viewed as a standalone page using whatever URL you want.  I haven’t used this yet but I’m sure it’ll come in handy!  We also now have the option of cleaner-looking category URLs.  So if you’re viewing my shows list for example, the URL will look like /category/c/shows/ instead of /category/C23/ or whatever gobbledygook it was.  I’ve switched this feature on already, but the old alphanumeric-type URLs will still work if needed.

On to another related topic.  This isn’t really a secret, but a year or so ago I set up a private area in my blog for real-life friends only… I did that so I could talk about my love-life, bitch about journalists and whatnot, free from the prying eyes of search engines.  But after I moved to California I stopped using it, for no particular reason.  Started blogging with my *mouth* instead of my fingers.  ;-) So at this point I guess I’ve decided to do away with the idea of private vs. public and go back to a more straightforward one-blog, one-membership-type system.  (That is, you are either a member or you’re not — members get their comments auto-approved and get to use avatars, and get to see site statistics, but that’s about it for the benefits.) The code to make the privacy happen is complicated, especially on the front page where I’m using shitloads of conditionals, trying to blend in private & public entries for logged-in members of this group.  ExpressionEngine gives me all the control I need, but like I said the code is a bit complicated.  I have to strain my brain every time I get under the hood to play with my layout — it might be because of my ignorance but there’s a lot of code-doubling going on and it’s a pain in the fuckin’ ass, that’s what I say.  It makes me nervous that I’ll screw up a template somewhere and accidentally let the whole world in on what was supposed to be friends-only.  And I’m not using that section anyhow, probably because I don’t have much to bitch about lately.  Everything’s going fine, I just haven’t felt compelled to blog much since I moved, and that’s cool.  Maybe I’ll continue that way or maybe not.  For the time being it’s nice to simply live my life and not to have one more thing on my to-do list.

Anyway.  There’ll be some changes made over the next few weeks and months. Please be patient and watch out for changing URLs on the inner pages, if you have links or bookmarks set up.  If you get errors at any time, or if something’s horribly illegible, I’d sure appreciate it if you’d let me know in the comments.