It is as it was

It appears Brian Flemming's Weblog has now been re-created on the new host pretty much as it was on the old one. I lost a few entries between March 4 and today, but they were mostly about how I was having trouble re-creating the site, so BFW says BFD. (If you notice any mistakes or other weirdnesses, please let me know.)

Thanks much for all the comments and emails of support during this horrible, horrible time. I appreciate all the offers of help. And for those who marveled that I seemed to be up 24 hours a day at some points, well, actually I was using a program called QuicKeys to automate the process of creating all the new entries and matching up the content with the old archives. I learned a lot about using QuicKeys--a program that lets non-programmers like me create simple "programs" to automate repetitive tasks--during this process, so there has been a side benefit, at least. Without being able to turn QuickKeys loose to perform 675 tedious tasks overnight (and then perform 675 more the next night, etc.), I may well have given up on the idea of retaining the archives here at all.

But now the blog is back, running on MySQL instead of Berkeley, which is apparently a change for the better. Also, I have a whole bunch of new features available to use at the new host, 1and1.com, including a bewildering array of statistical analyses (well beyond SiteMeter) so I can tell who is coming here, from where they were referred, what they did while they were here, what kind of computer they used while they did it, and what they were wearing. In fact, I'm watching you right now through your computer monitor.

I also have access to all sorts of form-creating and newsletter tools and other things that I'll be playing around with, no doubt. Oh, and Free Cinema finally has a host now, too, so I'll get that site up and running pretty soon.

In addition to all the BFW readers who patiently waited this out, thanks to:

--Girlie and Charles at the Movable Type Support Forums for all their help. The MT community is amazingly generous with its time and patient help, and Girlie and Charles are two of the most generous.

--The kind person at Six Apart who performed the original installation of MT at the new host. I don't know if she wants her name public here, as she apparently uses an alias elsewhere on the Web, so I'll just say thanks to you, Mystery Woman.

--The support folks at 1and1.com, Slumdance's new host. I've slammed their support department with emails and calls, and they aren't even mad at me yet, that I can tell.

--The support folks at Network Solutions, the registrar for slumdance.com. I even had to hit them up for support by phone twice on DNS issues, and their help was surprisingly speedy and friendly.

--Nora Murphy, my fellow Slumdance blogger, who has been unable to post during this Period of Transition. Now that I have used BFW as the guinea pig, I'm going to get her blog up and running. Nora always has interesting things to blog about, so do check in with her in the future.

--My advertisers, who keep growing in numbers by the week. Fortunately, traffic didn't actually drop off here at BFW during this period (in fact it went up slightly--most traffic here is to internal pages, which worked, not to the front page), but it can't have been fun to check in here and see the mess the front page was in. If you feel like helping BFW out with adverstiser morale, you could click on the ads and see what they have to offer.