I spent the morning making a few changes to the website. I can’t sing enough praises to WestHost, my new Linux-based hosting company. They give me full access to my httpd.conf file, and even let me restart my “server.” Its made doing some more advanced configuration SO much easier. I can’t believe I used Windows Server for so long!
Anyway, first up, the jonandnic.com Archives are truly archived. eXpression is now completely dead, as there’s no server anywhere (that I know of) running it. I used a website downloading program that sucked down all the blog posts and associated images into a bunch of static HTML files. I’d throw in a little advert for the program — the only one I found that could handle eXpression’s very dynamic links — but it annoyingly advertises itself when you visit the archives, so I’m not going to say any more about it.
I will, however, add that eXpression was brilliant (if I do say so myself.) The difference between eXpression, PhotoShare, webCal and their PHP equivalents is not in technology. Its in community. WordPress, Gallery2, and php iCalendar are now mature and excellent web apps. But back when I was slinging .Net code for the web, I had a lot of features and ideas that rivaled what was out there. There was just no community to help me, and no way to get my stuff used. I’m happy now using other people’s stuff, but its hard not to get a little nostalgic about all the cool toys I had made.
– The archives are available in the side-bar or now at http://archives.jonandnic.com
Secondly, speaking of Gallery2 and end-of-life of my code. PhotoShare, the web service/eXpression plug-in that provided the photo albums for the old jonandnic.com is dead now too. This was the main reason I hadn’t pulled the old site down yet — there was no other way to keep historical albums. Flickr makes for a great stream of current photos, but I’m not going to buy into their package that lets you keep more than 250 pictures. I just don’t like how it organizes them — like it or not, albums (aka folders) are still the best way to organize photos.
So I’ll continue using Flickr for what its good for, and I’ve added Gallery2 as a way to host historical albums on this site.
– Albums are available in the side-bar or now at http://services.jonandnic.com/gallery2
The deprecation of the old server also ends the relationship it required with ZoneEdit and EveryDNS. If you’re looking into hosting your own server, I highly recommend using these free services — in combination with each other.
Happy Thanksgiving to our Canadian friends and family!
