Welcome to the new and improved version of this blog! First, it was necessary to go back to the original name, The Meridiani Journal. The name Planetaria was no longer available as a proper domain name, which this blog now has finally or even as a just WordPress-based domain. But I still liked TMJ and it is more unique, which is important when there are so many blogs out there. The new domain url is now: themeridianijournal.com.
The biggest change, and most necessary, was moving the blog to a better blogging platform. As I am a long-time Apple user, and still am, I previously had the blog hosted on Apple’s MobileMe service. While adequate for basic blogging, it lacked a lot of features that more dedicated blogging platforms now have. I am now using the WordPress platform, one of the best blogging services there is. Now there are additional features available to readers, including monthly archives and category listings, category cloud, tags, comment subscriptions by email and post sharing such as Email, Press This, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. You can still subscribe to updates by email, but this is now done directly through WordPress instead of FeedBurner as before. I am still using FeedBurner for the RSS feed updates, but they also now have the post sharing options included in the feed.
Please note the new RSS feed: feeds.feedburner.com/themeridianijournal. Anyone subscribed to the previous Planetaria feed will need to resubscribe to the new one. There is also a new Facebook page: facebook.com/themeridianijournal. You can’t change the page name in Facebook, so I had to create a new one for the new blog. The Twitter feed is still the same, just updated with the new name: twitter.com/themeridjournal. If you are already following, you do not need to do anything.
The blog also has an updated look and feel, thanks to the many templates available through WordPress. The main blog area now floats and scrolls over the dark background image, the appearance of which reminded me of some planetary surfaces, and seemed a nice fit for a space blog.
Also with WordPress, I can now do mobile updates on the iPhone and iPad using the new apps, something still not available with MobileMe. Easier to update the blog when I don’t always have to be at the desktop iMac to do it…
Will do a few more additions and tweaks, but the blog is now up and functioning at its new home… 🙂
Paul