Upgrading My Blog: Part 2 Break Stuff
In the last post in this series, I specified the need for a plan with regard to upgrading my blog. Well a plan has emerged, been refined and has now been formally adopted. Rather than migrate Contains Moderate Peril to a new platform and effectively have to rebuild all the content, I am going to upgrade my existing presence on Squarespace. This decision was made for two reasons. Time and money. Migrating to a new platform will take a lot of time and incur additional costs. Upgrading the existing website will take less time and has no cost implications. That is not to say that it will be easy. It has become abundantly clear that the upgrade process will break stuff and that all published posts will have to be manually repaired. Hence my choice boils down to the lesser of two evils.
In the last post in this series, I specified the need for a plan with regard to upgrading my blog. Well a plan has emerged, been refined and has now been formally adopted. Rather than migrate Contains Moderate Peril to a new platform and effectively have to rebuild all the content, I am going to upgrade my existing presence on Squarespace. This decision was made for two reasons. Time and money. Migrating to a new platform will take a lot of time and incur additional costs. Upgrading the existing website will take less time and has no cost implications. That is not to say that it will be easy. It has become abundantly clear that the upgrade process will break stuff and that all published posts will have to be manually repaired. Hence my choice boils down to the lesser of two evils.
At present Contains Moderate Peril runs on Squarespace 7.0 and uses a template called Trombone Shorty. The template is obsolete and Squarespace 7.1 is now available with improved functionality. If I simply upgrade to the latest version, my site will break. If I replace the obsolete template with a compliant one, then upgrade, my site will break less. It’s all a bit of a Hobson’s Choice and somewhat annoying. However, this coming Saturday 13th September, I shall be upgrading one way or another and so expect the website to have anomalies. I shall then go through the back catalogue of posts and fix the formatting and replace the various pictures with ones that can be scaled accordingly.
I have decided that as part of this revamp and relaunch of Contains Moderate Peril, I am going to streamline its content. Film, television and video game related posts, such as reviews and long form criticism will now be the primary focus of the revised website. All other content will be relocated elsewhere. Where exactly, I’m not sure at present. But such content could find a suitable home on a platform such as Blot or Bear. I like to write about a wide variety of subjects and will continue to do so. However I think that it is wise to keep them separated. There was a time about a decade ago when Contains Moderate Peril had a clear identity. I think that has been diluted over time by trying to do too much in one place. I think re-establishing a clear remit will be beneficial.
