I got up too late to see what I wanted to see at the Boston Book Festival, so I decided to finally do something with this bobcolby.com domain. So far, that’s just mucking around with installation options, and reminding myself how to get Rapidweaver updates into Interarchy, the FTP program I use (Rapidweaver’s FTP function gives me weird error messages). I deleted the one-post blog.bobcolby.com because DreamHost’s “easy” install option limits customization, replacing it with “bobcolby.com/blog” (this). This also has the benefit of allowing multiple blog installations if I ever need them.
Where I’m running into problems is in setting up a real photoblog (something that looks better than FaceBook albums or the old Apple galleries I need to migrate from before my Mobileme account expires, which I think is sometime in January). I tried installing ZenPhoto (some really nice sites in their showcase), but am running into an error that someone else reported but no one seems to have a workaround for yet. It has something to do with watermarks. This may be because DreamHost only offers the “easy” install option for ZenPhoto and there may be a bug in the installation settings, which are invisible to me under that option. So until I’m ready to do all the installing of outside software myself, I may have to investigate using photo-based WordPress themes (which would mean setting up one of those multiple blogs I was just mentioning).
So it looks like I do have a lot of things to learn in my attempt to set up a “real” website (the Mobileme walled garden was easier, but confining). In the meantime, I selected a very minimalist (but not quite as generic as the default) theme for WordPress , and will be interested to see what it looks with an actual post in it.