RobbieAllen.com > Blog

I started rallenhome.com back in 2003 to house my personal blog and information on the various books I was writing. The design for the site was sparse and not very elegant. Over three years later, it was time for an update.

Originally, I used Blogger for the blogging software, but have switched to Wordpress. Blogger is dirt simple and a great solution for beginners, but it lacks the plugin capabilities and flexibility that comes with PHP-based Wordpress. I started using Wordpress about 2 years ago and fell in love with it. Wordpress is ideal for bloggers that have PHP web development experience. I’ve used Wordpress and the multi-user version, Wordpress MU, for several projects now. Wordpress turns out to be a pretty flexible content management system that can do much more than just blogs.

I started off with the WinterDay theme, but I modified so much that it barely resembles the original (including the underlying PHP code). I also borrowed a few design elements from Scott Berkun’s site (thanks Scott).

I considered migrating my blog to Wordpress a couple of years ago, but the migration options from Blogger weren’t very good. Now, the default Wordpress import script does a pretty good job of migrating posts and comments from Blogger. It doesn’t use the same permalink format, but I was able to address that with some additional logic in the Wordpress 404.php script.

As far as the domain name, I was able to snatch robbieallen.com a few months ago. A personal trainer in the UK owned robbieallen.com for a few years, so I didn’t think I’d ever get it. It expired this summer and eventually became available (there is a longer story behind this that I’ll blog about later). I’ve ported over most of the content from rallenhome.com and should be able to decommission my old site in a couple of months.

It took a bit of work to get everything set up and migrated, but I’m pleased with the result. Let me know what you think of the changes!