Website Changes

As a writer and a publisher, I have three websites to maintain. One is this blog, and I’m relatively content with the template-based tools to keep this in shape. There are a few things in the sidebar that I keep playing with, hoping to get right. Most of you who read the blog via RSS won’t even see those changes.

My author’s site, www.HenryMelton.com has gone through so many versions I can’t keep them all straight. Originally hand coded, I’ve settled on an iWeb maintained site hosted on the Apple servers. I’m relatively content with the ability to quickly make changes. I miss the ability to host back end form processing, so when I need forms, I have to use still another local hosting company for that purpose.
My publisher’s site, www.WireRimBooks.com has been hosted on Google since I formed the company. I was pleased with the cheap and simple tools for what I imagined would be a cheap and simple site. Unfortunately, I had it wrong. The templates of Google Page Creator were far too simple to make a good looking site, and the web template tools were too hard to use. But I kept putting off changes. Gradually, I started splitting off pages, hosting them over on the author site, but pretending they were all part of the publishing site, but it was a hybrid.
Then came Google’s migration over to Google Sites, yet another web template site management system, with most of the old system’s faults. Further, the site was migrated over automatically, and it was a horrible conversion. I had to change it, either by reworking each page using the new Sites tools, or moving the site wholesale over to the Apple site. It was an easy choice.
I had to create a second .Mac account (or MobileMe as they call it now) because I needed each site to have it’s own domain name. I created a Wire Rim Books account on my laptop with it’s own site, it’s own name, and then copied the iWeb Domain file over to the new account. I dropped into Terminal to change the owner of the duplicated Domain file to match the account.
After that it was just a matter of moving the DNS CNAME over to the apple server and fixing the links in the copied pages.
For the next week or so, www.WireRimBooks.com will be undergoing changes to take advantage of the better design capabilities of iWeb. If you see any bad links, please take a moment to let me know. Mary Ann already spotted one. They’re easy to fix, if I can notice them. Drop by for a visit.