Just like I recently moved to a new part of Seattle and gained a roommate, my blog has moved to a new part of the internet and gained quite a number of awesome roommates. Hopefully PZ does his dishes and the walls aren’t too thin (hear that, Greta?).
To old readers – welcome to our new home! And to new readers, howdy! I dabble in a little bit of everything – atheism, skepticism, feminism, biology, sex, academia, and general geekery. Please make yourself comfortable. Unless you’re an evangelical Christian or a men’s right activist, in which case, prepare to become very uncomfortable.
I know a lot of my readers had questions about the move, so let me use this introductory filler post to address those:
Q: What attracts you to Freethought Blogs?
- Being part of an awesome community of bloggers and readers. I’m surprised something like Freethought Blogs hadn’t happened sooner.
- Increased visibility and traffic. Another perk of being nestled in with awesome bloggers.
- …Money. You’ve probably noticed that unlike my old blog, FtB has ads. I do put a large amount of time into the blog, and it’s nice to be compensated a little. I won’t be buying sports cars or swimming in pools of money ala Scrouge McDuck, but it’s a nice little bonus to my grad student salary.
Q: Is all the old content going to be migrated?
Theoretically. All of the old posts are here, as are most of the comments, but not all. Jason from Lousy Canuck has been my nerdy knight in shining armor and is trying to figure it out for me. Everything should be functional in the next day or so.
EDIT: Jason is amazing and the archives are all transferred over now! Huzzah!
Q: Will comments still be on Disqus?
No. All the FtBers will be using the same WordPress comment system. And after a week of banging my head into my desk trying to transfer comments from Disqus, I’m ready to be rid of it. Apologies to those of you who will have to comment with different names or logins.
Q: Will the same RSS feed work, and if not, can you post that in large bold comic sans until my dumb ass gets the message and switches feeds?
I can’t figure out how to make things Comic Sans, but…
NO, THE OLD RSS FEED WILL NOT WORK. YOU MUST UPDATE YOUR RSS FEED TO THIS.
Q: Will there be an RSS feed for just your blog, or will it include all the others on FTB as well?
Like I said, the RSS feed for my blog is here, but you can also subscribe to the RSS feed for all of FtB here.
Q: FtB is ugly. Fix the ugly.
There will be a site redesign once all the technical kinks have been ironed out. Don’t worry, it’ll look snazzy soon.
Q: Will there be a decrease in awesomeness now that you’ve sold out to the almighty dollar?
No one asked this, but no. Really I’ll just have a new fund for beer money. And we all know that a well oiled blogger is a good thing.
Feel free to introduce yourself in the comments, get settled into the new comment system, and ask any questions. And thanks for being patient while I figure out this newfangled WordPress thing, and slowly add some finishing touches to the site.
First.
Yes, this is a test comment.
Um… other first?
Subbed.
hay wuts goin on hur lol
Welcome. The neighborhood has become even more awesome.
There goes the neighborhood.
Welcome to your new home! I hope you like it!
Yay! Goodbye Disqus! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!
Less than frontslash three you too.
Yay for new homes! I’m looking forward to continuing to read your kick-ass posts on the new site. FtB has got a great set of blogs going here.
The RSS feed doesn’t seem to be working yet…
Well poo. I don’t remember how to set up an avatar. Good thing I already have one.
[whinge] I don’t like change [/whinge]
Let me be the first to welcome you!
(Never mind all those other people up there.)
Nested comments are weird.
Glad you’re here.
nooooo not change!
I’ll get used to it.
Keep being awesome.
x
It’s about time! Glad you made it! And it appears that RSS is working.
Welcome to the new digs. :D
Also, am I like the only one who likes the current layout of FtB?
Great to see you here – this is fast becoming my one-stop-shop for all the best blogs! :)
<font face=”Comic Sans MS”>Blah!</font>
Or, if you want to be CSSish:
<div style=”font-family: ‘Comic Sans MS’, sans-serif;”>wibbly</div>
Ignore my malformed HTML entity.
Welcome to FTB, Jen! We’re really, really happy you’re here.
Hm, I’m not sure why it’s giving you the source code and not the easy “Click this button to subscribe through ___” stuff. Well, if you enter that link into Google Reader or whatever, it is functional and updating.
Hello.
Hey – nice new digs! Hope it continues to turn out great for you, Jen!
Nice place you got here. Welcome to the big time, Jen.
Hello. This now puts almost every blog I read with a couple of exceptions under one roof. Handy!
Welcome! Most of my favorite blogs on one site now. Yeah!
Now it’s a party!
Oh noes! And everyone who knows me already knows me, and everyone else doesn’t care!!!
I agree.
It is funny how HTML is so passive aggressive in its error handling.
*headbonks and purrs*
YAY! Another excellent blog!
Speaking of a party, what are we doing for your birthday, Stephanie?
Nice to see you here. I might read you more.
—
BTW, I suspect you’re gonna disappoint some people who are intrigued by your ‘boobs’ category…
(What? No, not I! Other people!)
Welcome! Glad you’ve joined the crew over here.
You ain’t alone.
Yay, glad to see another new blogger (new to here anyway). The rate things are going FTB may eclipse TVtropes as my “Why did I load this site? I’ve just spent 36 hours on the internet after wanting to read one single article” site
Well, thank you Blag Hag, for the uneven columns at FTB’s front page!
and welcome!
FtB gets more awesome by the day. And please do fix the ugly. :)
Welcome to your new home!!! Excuse me as I go prevent my cat from destroying my blinds….
Can haz cheezburger nao ?
me, too
How does one follow nested comments?
Preview is our friend. :)
That’s Scrooge McDuck. Now thath duck has been mentioned, I’m getting hungry.
Alas, they’ve evil and abominable.
You refresh the page, then scroll up to that comment to see if there are any responses.
(There’s a reason some of us want a flat-comment base; it’s so easy to go to the last known comment to see new ones)
Awesome! Almost all of my favourite blogs are now on one site. The Internet is spoiling me.
Anyway, welcome to the new place.
Wow, Now that you’re here, Jen, my only Atheist blogger NOT on free thought blogs is Hemant.
Let us Seattlites know where you’re enjoying that beer money sometimes!
What time zone are these posts getting stamped in? It is still the 20th here on the West Coast of the USA – 11:31 pm.
Congratulations on the cool new digs ;)
Yeah.
I’m not going to participate.
I noticed, on one of the other blogs, that when the the admin turned off the nesting, the comments appeared in chronological order.
Kinda like home.
—–
How the fuck do you bookmark this???
Fantastic! It’s getting too easy to keep track of great blogs.
Good to see you here, Jen.
The comment? Permalink is the date/time string highlighted in blue like a link.
Is it still “recently escaped” if it’s been a year?
But is D the same as 8?
Other boobs, you mean?
(BTW, is there a way to make the entire page not reload when you Reply to someone?)
Yay! All my favourite bloggers except Hemant Mehta are now on FtB!
Subbed.
Hi Jen. :D
What’s with all these people talking about subs? Are they possibly looking for Greta’s blog? O.o
Thing with nesting is that each succeeding comment becomes narrower than the last.
Eventually, you start getting down to one letter per line…
Hello and welcome from a Finnish long-time lurker who may have commented a couple of times.
Not only narrower on one side, but on both sides, and with margins on the top and bottom as well. I don’t mind nesting per se, but this is a weird setup. Also with the alternate-color backgrounds it looks funny.
How many times did PZ say, “we need more women at FTB,” before you decided?
Welcome to our new home.
Great to see you’re moving on up – although I have to grumble and complain about the ads. I don’t mind a moderate level, I can be one that sympathizes with the desire to turn page views into cash. But… I’m getting popups and it’s driving me nuts! Every other page view is yet another stupid popup, it’s like visiting a porn site!
I’m sorry, my reading of your blog and others on FTB has massively dropped off. Hate to say it and hate to see it go…
Great to see you’re moving on up – although I have to grumble and complain about the ads. I don’t mind a moderate level, I for one can sympathize with the desire to turn page views into cash. But… I’m getting popups and it’s driving me nuts! Every other page view is yet another stupid popup and it’s about as bad as visiting a porn site!
I’m sorry, my reading of your blog and others on FTB has massively dropped off. Hate to say it and hate to see it go…
Aaaand that showed up twice – don’t know why, guess I shouldn’t revise and click a second time. Delete the first one? Terrible internet connection…
Yay, you’re here! Been looking forward to your arrival since you accidentally posted a few weeks ago.
And welcome to your new home from l’il old me. Enjoy!
I’m looking forward to enjoying your posts here.
Interesting.
In comment #35, I note that fifth-level comments lack a “reply” link.
This has the advantage of avoiding the width-shrinking issue I mentioned there, but the disadvantage that this comment demonstrates (you have to branch out).
(I presume the nesting level is a configurable setting)
Huh. I refer the reader to my comment #52.
Welcome to the new digs! Finally, I can read the comment threads when I’m at work (Disqus is blocked by the All Seeing Eye-T).
And what do you know, the account I created for PZ’s blog works here too! Even more win.
Then there’s the problem of wearing out the scroll wheel.
Let’s find out how deep we can nest!
Oh, welcome here, BTW.
Heh, I was actually one of the first people to sign onto the project – I was just slow about getting here.
Hellozies. Nice place, isn’t it!
Howdy!
Will the long list of links to other skeptic, atheism, and biology sites that was on the left hand side of the old blog eventually be duplicated here? That was a nice feature.
Whoops. Please disregard previous post. I see that the links are located at bottom right instead of top left. My apologies.
Again, boo!
Comments load better here, but post worse.
That would involve an AJAX-based comment system. I’ve seen plugins for it, but not sure if they would work with this setup.
Like the new digs!
If you use Firefox to browse, download the Adblock Plus and NoScript add-ons: they will disable all the ads and you can browse atheist blogs to your heart’s content.
Okay.
Ah, thanks for that tip! Seems to do a much better job at blocking these ads.
Jen: I’m delighted you moved here. See, every once in awhile, one of my other fave reads (Myers, Brayton, Skepchick, Hemant, among others) would link to your old site. And they’d always highlight how insightful the post was, or how interesting the discussion brewing had become. And every time, I’d click the link.
And every. Damn. Time. The site would eat my computer whole, and spit bits back at me, until I finally had to do Ctrl-Alt-Del and Task Manager and repeatedly try to shut down my browser until it obeyed. And I just KNEW I was missing out on some of the most awesome stuff on the Web. So here’s looking forward to finally getting to read your stuff.
Slacktivist had issues with nested comments after the move to Patheos. For a large community, they are a bad idea. Please get rid of them.
TRiG.
Hi, I’m me. Welcome to FTB.
Ok, RSS is updated. Hop the posts to come will be as interesting as those in the past.
When you change the layout, please change the font of the titles – those shadows make me feel to need new glasses.
[CLICK] Bookmarks updated.
Miss the pic with the sign, though… :)
I’m just seeing if I can comment.
I live in Seattle too! Welcome to the city, and to FTB.
Someone help a luddite. With all my other RSS feeds, I just clicked on them and they show up in Firefox. With the new feed here, I get some options about how I want to subscribe to it, Feedburner and stuff of that ilk.
What do I have to do to put it in the “bookmarks toolbar” of Firefox?
congrat for your new home!
I adore your blog, and at the risk of sounding sexist, love your photo too.