Things at work and outside work have kept me quite busy for the last several weeks. But there was one weekend in January when I just sat down and decided to redesign this site. I had no real image of how I wanted to design the layout, it just kind of evolved over the course of 72 sleepless hours. The result is what you are looking at now, unless you’re using an RSS reader in which case please visit the site. There are still quite a bit of outstanding items to be added and changed but I couldn’t wait any longer so cut it over to production the other night.
This time, I rebuilt the site with WordPress and have abandoned MovableType (Sorry SixApart). I’ve been a loyal MT user and the only reason I switched to WP was because I couldn’t get MT4.0 initialized when I tried to upgrade it, and after searching for hours to find a solution I gave up in frustration. In case you don’t know, documentation for MovableType is absolutely crap considering the fact that they charge money for it. On the other hand, documentation for WP is plentiful and easy to find. I’ve tried WP in the past only to be less than impressed, however after spending more time with it I’ve realized that it’s so much easier to use and manage. As an example, my database when ported over from MT to WP shrunk in size from 128MB to 7MB. That’s because MT stores everything in the database, templates, stylesheets etc. while WP only contains blog content and configurations. When you customize templates you have to FTP them to your server. I suppose there is convenience to be able to administer everything from the MT admin pages but for me this is not a big deal. The only other beef is that WP uses dynamically created pages which may cause bottlenecks at the server but I don’t anticipate 5000pv per day for a while.
Most of the cosmetic changes I made to the template I did for my own satisfaction. All the images along the top and right hand side of the page change randomly when the pages is refreshed. I took all the toy images I had from the old site and display them randomly along the header. At the top right are photos of my retro robot toys. The search box area randomly displays images from classic Japanese films. I especially like the photos of Kaga Mariko. There are about 100 or so photos and I will be adding more all the time. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to support the old layout because it was done on MT and personally I’m kind of sick of it after 4 years, so apologies to those who prefer the old design. You can still see the old site here for comparison (the links are all messed up though). Maybe the new one will grow on you. Still to be added are RSS for comments, featured feeds, photo gallery, preview for comments and a bunch of other little stuff. If you have any suggestions or ideas please let me know in the comments.
Finally, I’m very happy to see that several people have kept my feed in their RSS Reader. To be honest, I didn’t expect anyone would be interested in my relaunch. It’s always nice to receive such kind comments.
That’s sad about you dropping MT, but I can understand your frustrations as I read similar ones elsewhere. I was lucky to have no problem upgrading to MT4.
Btw my MT DB takes 28 MB, of which 8 MB is the entry table, and the only other notable ones in size are for visitor stats (total 13 MB) and the activity log at 2 MB. My templates table is 560K for 5 blogs. So I’m curious about your 128 MB DB, there must have been some useless stuff somewhere, surely. :)
Anyway welcome back, it’s truly a happy return!
Btw can you turn off those WordPress stupid smilies. : )
Patrick, you know after you mentioned that and now that I think about it, 128MB is ridiculously large. So I went and checked again. The DB has grown to 144.11MB!!! I looked into it and it appears that one of my plugins was throwing an error since september and the activity log grew to 136MB. After deleting it the DB is now down to 7MB!! Haha..I’m soo stupid for now catching this. Thanks for pointing it out.
Smilies are turned off.
Its been a while. Welcome back ! :]
Congrats on the relaunch! For what it’s worth, I’ve kept your site in my RSS and have missed it for awhile :)
glad to see you back!
how’s the roadster doing?
I like your new layout better than the old one
one thing that bothers me though are the toy images at the top: they are href links that link nowhere
drop the <a> tag, or if you absolutely need it for the nice onhover image changing, then tweak the CSS to make sure the cursor doesn’t change to that little hand that makes me click repeatedly expecting something to happen
Yes, you’re right about the link tags in the header. I’ll see what I can do.
I like both your old & new .
you recommended WP to me years back,
siting its comparably ease-of-use .
is there any way I can use your template ?
Wouldn’t it be more satisfying to create your own template?
Great to see you blogging again!
I’m not into MT, WP, DB nor MP4. And neither do I mind. I’m just so glad I can read your blog again.
Keep on blogging!
Glad to see yer back. I’ve been visiting often just to see if you had start blogging again.
Very nice! I love the redesign, it looks more modern and fresh.
I also like the fact that you’re using Flickr to upload your photos as well but there’s one thing….
can’t you make your photos a little bit bigger? at least the same size as before? or perhaps you’re concerned about other people using your photos without your consent…well in that case that’s understandable.
Yep. Me seconded here :) Pics are soo small ToT
I can’t agree more about the size of the images, unfortunately Flickr doesn’t give me any other sizes to use. I’m currently looking for an alternative.
As I mentioned elsewhere…. glad to have you back, regardless of all the technicalities involved. I’ve had your site on my RSS all this time, so when I saw renewed activity it was a happy day!
Roy’s hiatus was soo long, and I noticed updates only today… doh… It’s so nice to be here again! I’ll be missing old design, but changes are good anyway. Love that “old-movie-pictures” feature. Thumbs up, Roy!
Who’s back? You’re back! Yay! And I love the My Melody!
Welcome back Roy! You have been sorely missed.
You are one of the few Japan blogs that can make me feel like I’m back there again. I think it’s because you write about something other than teaching English and how “wacky” everything is. (I used to follow Dannychoo as well but his site has gotten way to horney for me.)
Anyway, no one cares about my thoughts other than WELCOME BACK!
Hi Roy,
Glad you’re back. The most informative blog about Japan and never been equalled!!
Welcome back.
Tim
Feeew, WELCOME BACK! I was really missing your posts that where very useful for my work.
Roy,
Its’ good to see you are up and running this valuable blog, again.
Not that other japan blog sites are bad, but yours is much more comprehensive. It’s a little less witdrawl for those of us who used to live there.
Thanks,
Hank