Building this site and increasing my tiny web empire has been an act of love and of folly. Almost exactly 20 years ago, I started a blog on Google’s Blogger platform, then moved it to my own domain in 2007. Before that, circa 2001, I had built a site using Front Page and Geocities. So, I’ve been at this a while.
After leaving my original magnum opus, Postcards from the Mothership, more or less to rot on the vine, I wanted a fresh start. First of all, the stories that fuel Postcards were no longer mine to tell. But, the kids may occasionally make an appearance here, too. They’re used to being talked about online, after all. But also, I had let the site fall so far into disrepair that I needed to stage an intervention to bring it back from the dead, and also to halt the additional support charges I was incurring from my web host for having a site a disgraceful number of versions out of date.
So, fresh start and fresh slate, and to my surprise, a whole new WordPress. Blocks and Gutenberg seem to have changed everything, and for a girl who hand-coded every font colour and who used to FTP cute graphics to pop into the sidebar as separators, this whole copy-paste boom you have a pattern thing just about knocked my socks off.
So, I’ve unlearned some stuff and relearned some stuff and spent way way WAY longer than I expected building this site and its skeleton of content and ideas. I’m excited about this, though – a new venture and a new toy and a new sandbox all wrapped up in one package of pixels.
I wanted to point out that the icons on the home page are all sourced from Flatiron.com, including the mail subscription icon in the sidebar by smashingstocks, although I have mashed a few together to make up my own designs. And the cover art with the triple moon and many of the artsy flourishes here and there are via ClipArt by Artner Dluxe on Etsy. She’s Canadian too!
There’s lots more to come, but I wanted to make sure credit was shared for the pretty bits that helped me build this site.