A blogger’s job is never done, especially after a migration

I haven’t blogged for a while because I’ve been working hard, but I’ve been on this updated website, fixing lots of problems that started during the recent hosting migration and theme change.

For example, most posts — especially the most recent and oldest — now contain images again. Pictures I’d uploaded are not hard to find. The feature images are difficult because there is no clue letting me know what I used, and an old hidden version of this blog doesn’t show those pictures nor their names.

Another problem is punctuation. Apostrophes, quotation marks and dashes come across as Â, ’, –, “ and ” (not in any particular order here). I don’t know why the punctuation got changed, but I try to fix them as I see them (with generic quotes, as opposed to different ones for opening and closing, due to time), and then fix the entire page, which is usually entirely WordPress’ Classic View. You shouldn’t realize any difference as I separate those large, blog-long containers into smaller, paragraph-sized blocks — but Google should. I often start at the beginning and end of each post, since they’re the easiest parts to get to. I often stop when I get to photo galleries since they require a little more research and there ever seems to be enough time. (Those galleries do look a little different.) Plus, all the paragraphs got joined.

I also have to replace the white spaces that only show description labels where pictures were, and replace the pictures. That can get complicated when every other paragraph has a photo to its left or right, but it’s a good thing I haven’t done that in a while. Again, the featured image is a different story, and that’s what readers see when choosing what to read.

Other than that, I’m not making changes to the text of the posts. The date on them is the date they were published and should reflect that date, even if I changed my mind since then. The exception is links, often to old newspaper articles that no longer exist. That’s why you may come across a link with a line through it. There are literally hundreds. I know because there’s a plug-in that’s designed to tell me.

One last fix I had to make was emailing all of you who subscribed to the blog during its previous look. I realized your email addresses (and mine) did not get from the old host to new. In fact, I learned there are different types of followers. I did get the email followers moved over since my last post. I know other people using WordPress can see my work when they go online, but am not sure what the other categories mean. All I know is I’ve been getting emails everyday telling me people have added their names and then second emails telling me they’ve changed their passwords. I don’t know why they would need or have passwords if they’re simply readers. (Please encourage your friends to sign up as email followers.)

So that’s where we stand right now. I’ve had several ideas for blog posts and a few of them are half-written. I hope to finish and publish them as soon as possible. I figure most are fine if old, as long as they’re not outdated.

In the meantime, feel free to browse CohenConnect.com. Also, you can send suggestions. And you may be surprised by what you see from the past five years. I sure was!

P.S. The migration of news site ThePhillyFiles.com from a different host will be coming up in June. I hope that’ll be much easier since I’ve been through the process before and don’t plan to change the theme, which looks similar to this one.

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