...accomplished!

I've finished switching my blogs over to Custom Domain publishing — all except for DollStringing.com. (That one will be more complicated, because of the way I integrated it with the website. I could have done it too tonight, but I'm afraid I just ran out of steam.)

I foresee two problems. One, as I already mentioned, the URL for the site feed is going to change. Be sure to update your reader or re-follow me.

Two — and this one is more serious — I was unable to forward visitors to my old pages to the new blog. Most likely my only choice here — if I want to fix the problem, of course — will be to write the html myself and create forwarding pages for every. single. blog. post. I've. ever. written.

Yeah, I'm not thinking that's very likely. Anyone remember how to Google to see who is linking to me out there? It would be nice if I could just create forwarding pages for the URLs people are actually linking to.

Anyway, let me know if you find anything else that is problematic. It was a big job, one I spent most of my afternoon on, so I won't be surprised at all if I missed something!

Changes...

It seems that Blogger is soon to stop offering publishing via FTP. This is frustrating to me, since that's how I've published my blogs since I started this one in late 2005. I can switch to their Custom Domains and still publish to the same domain names I've always used, which will mean some tinkering to make my pictures show up, but no changes from the reader's point of view.

The one exception is this blog. Because I've been publishing to a folder rather than a subdomain, my blog URL is going to have to change — instead of www.katharineswan.com/blog.html, it will be http://blog.katharineswan.com. I'll be sure to set up forwarding so that you still get here, but I think it will change where the RSS and XML file is located. That means that if you "follow" my blog or use a reader to get my posts, you'll need to update it so your reader is looking for new posts in the right place.

The only other issue is that my blog will be down for a few hours as I get the DNS path changed over, and images may be down a bit longer (depending on how savvy I am at figuring out how to get them back). I should be doing this either today or tomorrow. I'll post again and let you know once everything is put to rights!

A year ago today

Today I was thinking about where I was this year at this time — with my business, I mean. There was a lot of talk about the economy and the recession last winter, and my January income was pretty short. That wasn't unusual in itself — the first month of the year is typically pretty slow for me — but then February was short too.

Also this time last year, I was getting ready for a trip to Haworth and London at the very beginning of March. You can read all about my adventures here:

The longest day of my life
My working vacation
Advantages and disadvantages of the handheld laptop
Literary travels: A writer's journey, part I
Inspiration: A writer's journey, part 2
A writer's journey, part 3

Fast forward to 2010. January proved to be a bit more lucrative, and February is shaping up to be the same. Still not raking in the dough, but then I never am this time of year. I am making more time for my horse now than I was a year ago, though, which is a good thing. I am also having to make time to force-feed a sick cat, which isn't such a good thing — although of course I would never choose the alternative.

Another major difference is that I'm making more of a commitment to work on my fiction now than I was this time last year. During NaNoWriMo, I worked on the novel I'd started during our trip to Europe in March. I'm still not quite done with it, but now that Kathy Kehrli and I are doing virtual write-ins once a week (when we can manage it), I'm at least moving ahead at a regular (if slow) pace.

This year has begun a bit differently than usual. No New Year's resolutions, and I haven't done monthly assessments on my blog in quite a while. I feel a bit like I'm surfing from month to month, wave to wave, with hardly time to do anything except a few things I force myself to make time for (riding being one of them). Not even my blogs are getting as much attention as they used to.

In some ways, I like the changes between this year and last. Spending more time with both my horse and my novel are major advantages to the harried schedule I've been keeping, and of course nursing my cat is a necessity. But I'd also like to do some more marketing and update my website (finally), and I'm honestly not sure how I'll find the time for either.

How about you? How has your business — and your life — changed from this time last year?