Well, you might have noticed rather quickly that KellysWorld looks a little different; okay, it looks a lot different. You might be asking why? Well, I've made another switch in how I create my website. Yes, for those of you that have followed KellysWorld since I started it back in 2003 you have seen several revisions of the site. This though is the biggest switch in several years.
In 2003 I began my website using Blogger, a website dedicated to just creating websites for anyone with the time and inclination. You might remember I called it KellysWorld Times. While I loved how easy it was to use Blogger, I didn't have a great deal of control over the site. I decided I could do it better on my own and moved to using FrontPage. A move that turned out to be painful; but in the end KellysWorld took shape with my own graphics and basic layout. While I learned how to deal with the limitations of FrontPage, I yearned for something more.
I found it in a Mac application called RapidWeaver. It made FrontPage seem like creating a website with a chisel and a rock. Only problem was RapidWeaver didn't work on a PC, only on a Mac. I eventually solved that little problem by moving back to favorite Operating System Max OS and never looking back. Interestingly, the switch to Mac would have a cascading effect still felt today in my home; but I digress. The switch to RapidWeaver gave me a great deal of power over my website and the templates I could use were amazing. While the site would undergo various changes over the past few years, none were major. I was happy with what I had and busy enough that change didn't seem all that important.
Something was missing though, the ability to edit pages when I wasn't near my beloved Mac. Using website creation software that was tied to a single device took away some of my mobility; mobility I hadn't enjoyed since I moved from Blogger back in 2004. In the past year the ability to post on the go has become something more and more people can do and want to do. There is also the lack of integration with Twitter, a service I used regularly.
For the past several weeks I have been looking at other options. One of them is a service called WordPress. This service is different than Blogger, but still very similar. Blogger is owned by Google (now) and is hosted by them. You can get your Bogger site onto your own domain, but the data officially resides with Google. WordPress took a different approach, it's a service you install on your own server so the program and all the data is hosted by the owner of the website. It's also open source.
That's been true for a while, what's changed is that there is an iPhone App that works rather well and I can integrate with Twitter in a two-way fashion. I can have post from KellysWorld appear on Twitter and I can have posts from Twitter appear on KellysWorld. Someone can follow either and still see the updates and posts.
For you the reader it isn't a big deal, for me it's a big deal in that my 140 character posts will appear on KellysWorld and I can post to KellysWorld using my iPhone. So if I'm board in a line or waiting for a movie, I can post something more than 140 characters and do so directly to my own website.
Does this mean KellysWorld will see more posts than before? Well, short ones yes... long ones, probably not. My website is changing, not my schedule.