I really hope I’m not coming down with something, because this would be a heck of a time to come down with something. Though it would serve me right, since I’ve overextended myself lately, going eight days without a break on a number of occasions recently. Most recently, I had the Million Worker March followed by seven straight days at the Service Desk. That’s a recipe for fatigue.
And so today and yesterday, my nose has been stuffed up. I don’t know what to tell you on that one. I hope I’m not getting sick. Since that would just be unpleasant. The last time I was truly sick, as in feeling bad enough that I actually had to miss something was back in 2002. Usually when I catch something, it manifests itself as a sore throat and then goes away on its own. No big deal.
So we’ll see.
Meanwhile, yesterday I spent the day making progress on the Web site. Good thing to do on a day off of work. Yesterday I finished the work on Photography, and also took the time to do Odds and Ends and Major Areas. So now on the redesigned side, we have Journal, Major Areas, Odds and Ends, and Photography. Still in 2003 colors are Archives, Life and Times, Online Store, and the quote/introduction area. I just can’t wait for it to be finished. I’m actually “over the hill” as these things go, since Photography is the largest section. So it’s all downhill from here. And I’m really digging this blue color scheme I came up with.
Oh, and I retired College Life as a section! I find that more amazing than anything, really. That drives home the point – I’m a JMU alumnus now. College is a thing of the past. It’s still a subsidiary site, though. So the content isn’t missing, just moved.
And now this is the troublesome part about a redesign – that period while the search engines can’t find you. Usually, I end up moving something around when I redesign. Last year, we shifted things out of Photography to more appropriate places in College Life and in Life and Times. We also shifted some things out of Writings to College Life and Odds and Ends. And we renamed the old “Photo Essays” to Photography. So a lot of URLs changed, but most remained the same.
This year puts a face on why I highly recommend linking to the splash page and not an internal page. This year, I needed to change the file extensions from .htm to .asp because the database connections will only work with a .asp extension. So most (but not all) internal URLs will change for that reason.
I mainly try to keep Google knowing where I am, since it’s numero uno when it comes to search engines. For Google, I actually resubmit my site whenever there’s a major URL change, so that Google can crawl the modified area.
I still think it’s interesting with the whole thing of Googling one’s name, though. I find everything. It’s kind of neat.