Good news - all the remaining unresolved templates in this new site design of mine (the mobile version, the desktop version and the associated modules) have been declared "semi-frozen," meaning that I can't currently think of any more changes that need to take place, although I'm assuming at this point that I'll eventually discover some more. What this realistically means is that all the 30 or so templates already created for the new design (the print version, the various feeds, the archive templates, etc) are essentially finished, unless I can prove to myself that any more changes need to take place, which means that we're on the final countdown to the Grand Switchover officially taking place. Well, hallelujah!

The biggest change made in the last update was probably my decision to get rid of the full-text RSS feed altogether; it just never has worked right, ever since I created it, and nothing I did seemed to fix things. And the Atom feed is already publishing the full text of my entries anyway, so I'm just going to have people sign up for that one instead in the future when they want to get my journal delivered that way. So, the few of you who had already signed up for the RSS full-text feed can now unsubscribe from it, because it no longer exists; simply subscribe to the Atom feed instead [jasonpettus.com/blog/atom.xml], in the same news reader you were using before, and make sure to choose "Complete Entries" instead of "Summaries Only," if your particular news reader gives you the option. (Technically the Atom feed publishes both, giving you the option at the user level to choose which you want; with the RSS feeds I define it on my end before you receive it.)

I also discovered something hinky about the archive process that has inspired some design changes; this should be obvious, of course, once you think about it, but basically MT only updates the sidebar information on your archive pages the times you specifically call for MT to rebuild the site. The result, of course, is that there's not much of a point in running "recent entries" links in your archive template sidebars, because they only reflect what was recent when that archive was last rebuilt, not what really is most recent on any given subsequent day. So that's exactly what I did (got rid of the "recent entries" options, that is), plus got rid of the "email this entry" option in the archives because that only seems to work with the newest entry as well.

I found simple pieces of Javascript last week which should let me display both random text and random images here, so I'm going to install them tomorrow and see if they actually work. If they do, it means that the photo you see at the top of the page will change each time you visit the site, as will the "random tip" that desktop users see in the sidebar on the main index page. And finally, of course, I did lots more fussing around with the CSS specifications, to get even closer to my goal of a perfect dual display on both desktop screens and mobile-device ones.

So at this point, basically, I simply sit on the site design and watch it for a week, as I post new entries and read through them myself, and pretend that I'm a random reader who is visiting the site for the first time. And while you're not looking, I'll also be at home this week, typing up all the new content for the dozens of links you're currently seeing on this beta page - the 'about' information, the 'contact' information, the pre-purchase page for my latest tour (and lots more on this in the coming weeks, I promise - and yes, a big letter is coming soon to you as well, Caro!), etc etc. And if a week goes by and I still have no major changes, then the next time I can afford a full five-hour access card at the internet cafe, I'll be making the Grand Switchover - closing down my Geocities site, moving this new blog to the main root of my main site, getting the new AvantGo channel up and running, getting the direct links to my feeds up and running, etc.

Anyway, so that's exciting news, and is coming a full two months before I was expecting it to, which is even better. And this, of course, will let me finish my newest travel book that much faster, which will let me redesign my publishing company's website that much faster, and start releasing a whole slew of redesigned books that are just sitting on my hard drive right now. Which will let me get to importing all my old journal entries to the new site design that much faster, which will finally give me the very first version of an all-inclusive personal website I've ever had even that much faster.

Whew - so lots of online work ahead for me this summer and autumn. I hope you'll stick around and follow it all yourself.