The State of Amanna Address

February 4, 2008

Okay, that ended up sounding a bit more pompous than I intended, but all in all a decent title for this post.  I really haven’t posted much over the last week or so.  I’ve been busy with the blog move and another “project” I’ll tell you about.  So for the two people who are interested, here’s a recap of what I’ve been up to.

The blog move

So the majority of the blog move has been completed.  As anticipated, it wasn’t without its unexpected challenges, but wasn’t as bad as I expected either.  The biggest thing I notice is the little things you never think about with a Wordpress-hosted blog, that aren’t available when you self-host unless you install them yourself.  Things like statistics on your dashboard and periodic backups.

I didn’t realize the full extent of this until late last week I had some time and I updated the 5 or so posts I have that have been “Dugg” and get a lot of search engine and referral traffic.  This includes my gear posts and Kara attunement guide.  In particular, the Kara guide is linked off a couple gameplay forums and gets a ton of traffic.  Well, I put some wording at the front of the posts trying to send people over to the new blog.  Of course, I know they won’t, but that’s okay.  It’s great to see those high traffic numbers, but time to get over it I suppose.

Anyway, I then tried to update those posts on my new site with new Digg links, and it just wasn’t working.  I kept trying and looking at the text and just couldn’t figure out what the problem was.  Honestly, I was at this for around 15 minutes until it dawned on me that I was now self-hosted and the Wordpress-supplied “[digg=url]” functionality was no longer available.  Crap.  Worse yet, scanning the Wordpress plugin directory there are only a couple Digg plugins.  I’ve tried all of them and none of them are as simple or as stable as the old one. 

So, I’m still looking for a good alternative there.  I’ve posted a question on Blog Azeroth and I’ve also come across this thing called ShareThis that I’m going to try.  If anyone is self-hosting and has a good solution for this, I’d love to hear it.

Oh, and I wrote up a quick overview of the plusses and minues of Wordpress-hosting versus self-hosting.  Probably stuff you already know, but in case you want to take a look, it’s linked to on my Wordpress page down a bit.  It also happens to be my first experiment with Google docs so any input there would be great also.

My Promised UI Setup Series

Unfortunately, not a lot of work here due to…

Recent Gameplay

I have to confess that although I haven’t been playing Amanna much recently, I have been playing.  I’ve got three alts underway (Shaman, Warlock and Mage) and they are all a lot of fun, but mostly I’ve been playing my Shaman when I get a chance. 

The funny thing is I really can’t say that I love playing a Shaman - while it’s a hybrid class much like the Druid, I don’t find it anywhere near as fun as a Druid.  I think the thing is, it’s a blast having a lower level character again and leveling up, especially in the “lower” levels.  Don’t get me wrong, I like having a level 70 Druid, but there is something definitely more easy-going playing a character in the mid-twenty’s just running quests and dinging every couple play sessions.  It reminds me of when I first started playing the game and the wonder and enjoyment I got.  As a long time fantasy role-player (both pen and paper and computer), WoW was the first game I had ever played that I felt captured the spirit and imagery of the role-playing universe.  I really felt like I was participating in the world I was playing in.

So while I hope to eventually return to Amanna, with a new guild and fresh objectives, for the time being I am Mastu, level 24 Shaman.   And having a blast.

Posted in Wordpress, World of Warcraft