There might be a time to say something. Something. There. I’ve said it. Nah, just kidding. Just a usual up-to-date entry, that’s all. Main news – after long-termed ignore of the new diary testbed I finally made my way there. Well, the ignore wasn’t intentional, I had all the inspirations to play with the new thing, only didn’t have the time. Since I’ve accumulated few journals, thought, it would be sensible to test-migrate just one for a start. So for those who are in need of feedback, here is mine.
It certainly is different. The unfamiliar may look a bit hostile to those who used to the good old-fashioned-all-outdated site. It will look confusing the least. User friendly? Perhaps, for those who is starting afresh, opening new diary, yes, it should be easy enough. Me...I am rather sentimentally attached to my old diary’s features and perks I’ve developed over the years, they are my comfort pad. Sure first thing I wished to do after moving over, was to get the new place look and feel as close to the old one as possible. And I found it is not quite as possible as I thought. Mind you, it might be just the matter of finding your way through the cockpit of controls. But my general sense is this will be different. That doesn’t mean it is not good. And I admire the great job done on bringing the diary up to date with the modern technologies. It is a work in progress and I think, we should all do our best to help to make the new DD into new home for our thoughts, dreams and inspirations.
Now to the practical comments gathered in my explorations of the new site. The things I’d like to be preserved but couldn’t find so far are only few. But it might save someone time to try to find them if they are not available.
I can’t figure out if it is possible to customise the following on a non-plus account: the entries font; background of the entries and footers/headers individually. I found the “Next/Previous” links to be too shy to be noticed and would prefer to be able to add them to the customised menu. I’d like to be able to hide default links and tags that appear on every entry and to my personal like aren’t needed there. Like Permalinks and such. (I’m confused by Permalinks and why I would want them to be displayed for everyone)
Friends list is something I cannot test on a free diary, but I’d like to know if I have to re-add old-DD friends again in the new one and if they have to logon to the new to be able to visit my place there. It looks like if you want to read friends only entries of your friends migrated over, you’ll have to migrate your diary as well? Is that so? Can anyone with the plus account confirm?
There is a lack or absence of the Hits feature in the new diary and while it might be not used by many, I generally would like to know where my visitors come from, especially when they leave less then friendly comments. Some may say do not allow anonymous comments but my policy on this diary is that everyone is entitled of opinion, whatever this opinion might be, it is only shows their intellect, not mine. And some people don’t have any other way to show off. So I tend to let them say what they have to say and tend to ignore what they say if they say complete bollocks. So being true to myself I wouldn’t want to change access to this diary, but it would’ve been helpful to see who’s been leaving me the pieces of their mind hiding behind the anonymous...some of them I can recognise by IP by now ;-)
I’m sure, I will add more to the “wish list” as I go along nesting in my new home; and I hope that eventually we will have such thing setup for everyone, so we can sort the “to do” things in the order of importance. I am not sure that FB would be the right place for it, as someone else pointed out.
Phew...New DD review is over. For now, that is. On the daily mundane stuff there is not much to mention that worth mentioning. Life has her ups and downs and so does my mood. I suspect it would be too boring otherwise. At the moment everything has slowed down for me. I’m awaiting for planning permission to be approved and then the big mess of construction works will begin. Hopefully, somewhere May-June. I’m looking forward and the same time not looking forward to it at all. It not quite matches my dreams of what I could’ve done with my place. In the end I will end up with the lesser living space, and will spend all my life’s savings for that, how odd is that. On the other hand, I’m looking forward for this project to start and respectively, to end sooner, so that I can stop freaking out about it already. I believe, this should be all for this entry which is becoming rather unscrollable.