This post is going to be a progress report, and boy what a doozy!
This blog has been a pilot project from day one, as stated in the This Site tab. The intent was to use the free account to learn how to use the WordPress software, then when I felt ready, launch the actual project on its own server.
Well, the pilot project is wrapping up…
I will keep this brief, but I want to give a quick explanation of what I have been up to, and what to expect from the new direction Project Em Hotep is taking.
Several weeks ago I found a great third party server (JustHost.com) to host my WordPress software. The price was right and it has all of the bells and whistles I was looking for. I found an awesome looking theme (theme in WordPress parlance basically refers to how your blog looks) from the folks over at www.infocreek.com which is free (again, the price was right!) and which I have been seriously tweaking for the last week or so. You can get a peek of the theme by clicking here, but expect my version of it to be seriously Egyptianized..
So how else will the new website differ from this one? For one thing the pictures will be larger, but will also load faster. How did I achieve that? I don’t want to get too technical here, but basically I am formatting the pictures differently when I upload them. The body area of this current blog (the part where the articles appear) is 500 pixels wide, but when I upload the pictures I upload them full size, so when you click on an article the full sized pictures are loading, but they are being scrunched into a width of 500 pixels, with the height being relative to size change. So, for example, if the picture is 1000×1200 pixels, it is compacted to 500×600. But, before it is compacted the whole picture is loaded.
The body section of the new website is 600 pixels wide, which means the pictures will be both wider and taller, and I have to say, they look pretty darn good. But they will load faster because I am re-sampling the pictures to the standard 600 pixel width before uploading them, and I am also re-sampling them in such a way that makes the file sizes smaller without any reduction of resolution. Ok, there is some reduction, but you would have to blow the pictures up to something like 3600% to be able to see the difference.
If your eyes are glazed over by the above, just remember this: Better, larger pictures, less time to load to your screen.
I have also kicked the font size up just a notch so your eyes don’t really glaze over with the wider paragraphs. So add easier to read to bigger pictures, faster loading.
So some of the articles I have copied from here to there had to be reformatted a little. And some of the articles had to be reformatted a lot. When I first started this project the idea was to present the pictures I took while in Egypt with a minimum of text. But the format of my articles have grown over these past few months. What started as simple photo essays have turned into full-blow articles with a Further Reading section! I guess this was to be expected. I am a very amateur photographer. But I am a professional writer and sociologist with a heavy background in history (I was a history/sociology double major until well into my Junior year of undergrad). So its only natural that my desire to write and inform would come to the front. As Michael Corleone says, “You are what you are.”
So another thing I have been up to is re-writing several articles. In particular, Highlights of the Giza Plateau, and The Giza Plateau Revisited have been combined and then redivided into eight (yes, eight!) individual articles–one on the Giza Plateau itself, two separate articles about the Sphinx and the Valley Temple, an introduction to pyramids in general, individual articles on each of the three main pyramids, and a short bit on the Mena House. The format I am going with is more along the lines of what I used in the articles about Coptic Cairo and the Mosque of ibn Tulun. The Shemsu’s Voyages articles will be stand-alone at the new site rather than being attached to other articles.
I will also have a bit of a local take. I have not mentioned my locality before, but I live in Louisville, Ky, and as a way of adding some local appeal I will be offering articles on things such as good restaurants for finding Egyptian Food, anything Egyptian that passes through our local museums, and a list of classes each semester offered by our local universities (Go Cards!!!) that have anything to do with Egypt or Egyptology. I will also be blogging about news regarding Egypt–not so much politics as who dug up what and where.
So yeah, we are growing. Any questions?
What is the address of the new website?
I am not going to announce that until I am ready to fully roll it out.
When will it be ready?
I am guessing in about another week or so. The announcement will be pretty hard to miss.
Will I still maintain this site?
No, all new articles will be posted to the new website only. I will leave this site up for a few weeks to re-route people to the new site, but after that I will be pulling this site down. WordPress.com is very kind to offer free space for blogs, but to just park a dead site here is lazy and taking advantage of their kindness.
Will the new site drive you crazy with lots of pop-up windows and flashy ads?
No, if I decide to put ads on the new website they will be very low-key and off to the side. The decision to go to a third party server was not in order to turn this into a big money making venture, but simply to give me total freedom in designing the look of the site rather than having to chose from a limited set of cookie-cutter unchangeable themes. Any ads will be to promote local businesses somehow tied in with the subject matter, or to help defray the costs of the server. But no pop-up ads, annoying flashers, or ads that suddenly blurt a sales pitch out of your speakers. I hate that stuff, too.
Well, that’s about it. I am pretty psyched! The next post I make to this blog should be the announcement of the new address, and you can look for it in less than a week.
Thanks to everyone who has been following my progress here. As of now we have had more than 600 hits (visits) to the pilot project, and that is without doing any promotions, mentioning the site on other related websites, or even optimizing to search engines. That is very encouraging indeed.
