I’m happy to announce that there will be some changes here come July 7, 2007 (07/07/07). There are 4 key things that will be happening.

1. Move Site to patrickokeefe.com

The first thing that I will be doing is moving the site from it’s current domain to patrickokeefe.com. I acquired this domain in March of 2005 and talked about using it in February. Does it really matter? No, not really. But, I just kind of like the idea of having firstnamelastname.com for my personal site and I can’t think of a better use of the domain name.

Thanks to my man Chris, I will be able to redirect any and all visitors over to that domain name seamlessly.

2. Convert to WordPress

I will be converting from Nucleus CMS to WordPress. Nucleus has served me well, but I decided awhile back that I would be converting all of my Nucleus CMS sites to WordPress. It’s going to be a slow process, but I’ll get it done (the only site that has been done so far is iFroggy Network Blog, but they’ll all get done, eventually).

Why am I switching to WordPress? It just seems easier to use. I have friends that use it and legions of people swear by it. There seems to be more options when it comes to customization and flexibility (lots of cool plugins). More people are familiar with it (and design for it). I’ve also been told by one person that his sites received more traffic after they were switched to WordPress. Although he can’t explain it, that certainly wouldn’t hurt. Finally, I feel that it’ll be easier for me to make more money with WordPress, due to things like the Text Link Ads plugins that exist for WordPress only.

3. Launch New Design

With the conversion to WordPress, I’ll be launching an entirely new design. I believe that I know what one I’ll use (I’ve been buying up designs on the SitePoint Marketplace whenever I see a good one) and it’s all ready to go. It’s… different, but I hope that it’s well received.

4. Join the iFroggy Network

Finally, my blog will be joining the iFroggy Network. This means a few different things for the blog. First of all, it’ll get more traffic. That’s a given. The network bar will be added as well as the network links (I actually already have those, but they will be slightly different) and it’ll be a part of all of the cross promotional stuff that we do.

I’ll also introduce advertising (of some kind) on this site. I haven’t decided where or what yet (besides Text Link Ads), but I’ll be adding some form of advertising and advertising will now be a consideration for this site. I’ll also be adding some User Guidelines as it’s probably a good idea for me to have some clear guidelines if this is going to be a part of the network.

Finally, perhaps a change as drastic as any other, I’ll be writing here much, much more. I’d say that I’ll average a post every day, at least. You see, if something is my network, my family, my responsibilities (like a site that I am on staff at) or my friends, I jump for it. Anything else falls to the wayside, including anything that is personally mine. As this site was always personal, it was always a bit of an afterthought. Kind of a “whenever I want and have time and don’t have something else immediately better to do” sort of thing. That’ll change now. I’ll feel OK about dedicating time here because it’s a part of my business.

One thing that won’t change is this: I’ll still talk about whatever I want, whatever strikes my curiosity or… whatever. Short posts, long posts. I am Strong Bad posts. Whatever I think is interesting, I’ll post about. I’ll just make more time to do it now. There have been plenty of times where I thought “hey, I should write a blog post about that” but then I said “err… it’s my personal site… gotta go update phpBBHacks.com!” Now, I’ll make those posts when I have ideas for them.

Does anyone care what I have to say? Who knows? I don’t really care all that much. I’ve always written this blog as a “whatever is floating around my mind” sort of thing and that’s all I’m going to do. If people want to read it, cool. It’s a personal blog. Nothing much else to say. So, we’ll see how this progresses. :)