Well, the happy news is that I finally have a domain (at Dreamhost — you know they rock!) and brand-new hosting. I had a saint’s patience sometimes with Trap17, but I realized a little late that posting on the forums there was no longer as insightful as it used to be — and swiftly became a drag. To top that off, slow support and regular downtime, including one long stretch of database failure as pungent as a dying zebra, broke off our wary relationship forever. And then I found Hippo Hosting; not only did they offer Ruby On Rails (handy in case I want to play with Simplelog), and just enough cushiony space and bandwidth for me to settle into — all at the very reasonable price of $40/yr (you can get your first year at $30 if you hurry!) And their support is fantastic, given what I’m used to. I never thought that a server-update e-mail could make me so happy!
But the most wonderful part of the move was how easily I set up Movable Type 3.35 and imported my files. The installation was comparable to WordPress’ for the first time; I did have to input some data into my mt-config file and fix a few permissions glitches with some swanky research, but everything was working beautifully in no time. I don’t even like to speak about my two-week install of Movable Type 3.2 anymore. It gives me all sorts of wurmblies. I could have gone with Movable Type 4.0, but it seems more problematic than nifty right now; besides that, 3.35 is a rather nice installation.
I also redesigned my stylesheet, following, to some extent, a format set by Steve Smith. Bryan also has some formatting options laid out, so really, the take was pretty vast. And I was pretty frustrated. My old stylesheet was extremely long, a bit unorganized, and a little repetitive. While the single-line CSS format makes even one item stretch out beyond the boundaries of my browser window, it renders me able to separate parent from child selectors with much more ease than before. All of the properties are then sorted alphabetically (I haven’t done this yet), and that way, as long as I remember the alphabet, I can pretty easily find whichever attributes I want — I like it a bit better than regular indentation. Here’s why:
Indented
You can see all the values here, and they’re pretty well organized.
h1 {
font-size: 2em;
color: #444;
}
h1.entry {
font-family: Arial, Tahoma, sans-serif;
}
h1.menu {
color: #999;
padding: 10px;
}
Indented (w/ single-line)
But doesn’t this just look better?
h1 {
font-size: 2em;
color: #444;
}
h1.entry {font-family: Arial, Tahoma, sans-serif;}
h1.menu {color: #999; padding: 10px;}
The way you organize your stylesheet is as personal a choice as what pants you decide to wear in the morning — some pants just look better than others, but those really comfy pants that you’ve worn down to perfection? Sometimes, you just can’t beat that!
Read 19 comments (Leave a comment?)
Jim Whimpey said:
I am pleased you have your own domain and proper hosting now.
Alphabetically listing properties doesn’t make sense to me. I prefer grouping similar properties. For example: width with height, padding with margins, font-size with line height, position with top and left, etc, etc.
Posted on July 17, 2007 2:50 AM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
Margin and padding end up together anyway, and most of the font properties do as well. Of course, things like borders shouldn’t really have precedence over, say, backgrounds, so I do a bit of shifting around. Like I said, I haven’t actually done the alphabetical bit yet; I was just muddling it around in my head. I think it would really only work for the single-line properties anyway :)
Posted on July 17, 2007 11:01 AM; Permalink
Brendan said:
I thought about Dreamhost for a while, but they were just too expensive for me. Then again, maybe I’ll take another look at them…
Posted on July 17, 2007 11:06 AM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
Brendan: Well, I’m prepared to pay $9.95 for my domain because Dreamhost has nice support. I’ve found cheaper domains, but I didn’t really have a clear indication of how reliable they were.
Posted on July 17, 2007 2:22 PM; Permalink
Yian said:
Heh. I’m still using a sister-site of Trap17’s — Astahost — as my hosting site of choice. And I do agree that there’s seriously a lot of done time, which is to be anticipated considering that the service is free.
I’ve been thinking of switching out, but spending my parents’ money on either hosting or a domain just seems more than pointless.
I managed to get my domain for free by posting in forums, so that was a nice trade-off. Glad to see that you’ve made the switch though.
Posted on July 17, 2007 6:53 PM; Permalink
Philip Karpiak said:
Grats on the new changes! Domain, host, and CMS? Yikes!
I’m also not part of the alphabetical-sorting camp. It just seems like too much micro-management, with little benefit in the end. Guess it doesn’t hurt to try it out in the future though. (I have, with mediocre results)
Posted on July 17, 2007 9:02 PM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
Yian: It was my birthday, so I thought I’d put the money that my mom would gradually spend to buy me things I didn’t want to things I did want. Besides that, I reasoned out the costs and everything — I also made my dad feel somewhat guilty for not buying my hosting beforehand, because the pound rose against the dollar. I have my tactics ;)
I wanted to try Astahost for a while, and the free domain sounds wonderful, but after three years at Trap17, I got a bunch more space, a few more credits, and a bit of stress. It was good while it lasted though, until a few months ago?
Philip: Well, I might as well put it through a test while I keep tweaking my CSS. I’ll let you know :)
Posted on July 18, 2007 12:05 AM; Permalink
stabani said:
congrats on your domain— do good things with it while I retire my own :-D
Posted on July 18, 2007 2:18 PM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
Stabani: Awww, I hope you’ll come back! We’re gonna miss you :(
Posted on July 18, 2007 4:37 PM; Permalink
Kilian Valkhof said:
You finally have a domain! Congratulations! Time to update my blogroll :)
I was at a meeting about a moth ago where there was a little discussion about single-line vs. “regular” css. The latter makes using a CVS much easier, while the first is faster to parse. This is how I do it: I use regular CSS during development, and then shorten it to single lines when sites go live :) Best of both worlds :)
Posted on July 20, 2007 4:44 AM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
Kilian: That’s a good idea! I’m always editing things though. I can’t seem to keep my hands away from my CSS, so we’ll see how this works out :D
Posted on July 20, 2007 12:02 PM; Permalink
greg said:
Hmm I may try the single line CSS out soon, I have a 1920 pixel wide screen so hopefully I won’t get too many horizontal scroll bars!
Posted on July 20, 2007 2:15 PM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
Greg: Lucky you! Best of luck :)
Posted on July 20, 2007 3:55 PM; Permalink
Alex said:
The new server is indeed nice, but I have to warn you against RoR. :P On another note, I think I’ll have my blog django app ready for when Hippo upgrade Cpanel (which also should hopefully stop the downtime).
Posted on July 21, 2007 10:24 AM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
Alex: Because it’s a clusterfuck? :P
I can’t wait to see your app! Just don’t kill Apache anymore ;)
Posted on July 21, 2007 9:29 PM; Permalink
Aaron T. said:
Hmm, I should get around to a proper domain, too. I’m just having troubles coming up with a domain.
I’ll probably get it in September.
BTW, this is a good resource to fix that www subdomain thing:
http://no-www.org/faq.php
When I get my new domain, I’m probably going with Class B.
Posted on July 23, 2007 3:21 PM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
Aaron: I actually like the .www. I mean, it’s the World Wide Web, and just having that there makes everything feel so connected.
Good luck with your domain! Lemme know if you need help thinking of one :D
Posted on July 27, 2007 3:28 PM; Permalink
Takumi said:
Great you got your own domain and hosting! I’m a little confused though, you only bought your domain name at Dreamhost and got your hosting somewhere else?
I’ve got an account at Dreamhost, love it, but compared to MediaTemple lots of downtime… which is also why I have an account at (mt) haha
Anyways, cheers to your new site :)
Posted on November 14, 2007 9:28 AM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
Takumi: Hosting at Dreamhost was a little more expensive :/
But thank you!
Posted on November 15, 2007 6:20 PM; Permalink