So just why did I move (again)?

We like things fresh, だから

Loyal friends who have been keeping in touch since the first versions of Talfryn will know that I make a move or facelift almost once every year (sometimes more – the previous one lasted barely 6 months): it ranged from my very first black-and-white themed v.1 and unsuccessful blog, to this recent move to WordPress, and includes the various types of galleries (html, flash-based, php, javascript…) I had in between.

WP beckons

I've finally shunned aside the inertia and embraced the powers of WordPress (I've been eyeing it for a long looong time), I realise it has just about the same capabilities of a CMS, which was what the previous version was based on. I love WordPress' tweakability, and shall be adding more plugins in the weeks to come. The reasons to move to WordPress are obvious. Besides, I was starting to get annoyed with Blogger's frequent downtimes and slow publishing speeds, and that irritating need to keep re-publishing the blog whenever a slight change was made. I will keep my old blog as it is on Blogger, and everything from pre-April-2006 shall remain there as a part of… history.

This is for me, my family and friends

talfryn.net was originally meant to be that way. But at certain periods of times through the years, it became increasingly difficult for me to express myself openly. I felt self-conscious, somewhat embarrassed, and I felt that I couldn't be silly on my blog anymore. The need to watch what how I carry myself on my blog made me think twice of maintaining Dogged Wanderings, but I couldn't so easily shun aside this habit and companion of so many years.

Instead…

I shall retain a profile and fixed photographic portfolio on talfryn.com. Talfryn.com will be my public face from now on and in an attempt to separate the nature stuff from my daily life (and hence keep away too many unknown strangers from knowing what I had for dinner on Friday), I shall start a new blog on that sister site, to be unoriginally named Dogged Nature. Note also that all the nature-related links on my personal blog will be shifted onto Dogged Nature instead. Juggling the two blogs concurrently will be tough, but I see it as a necessity if I am to keep my sanity.

No more galleries

I will no longer integrate a gallery within talfryn.net. It is too tedious, and with the amount of photos I'm generating it's next to impossible to keep updating my galleries (not to mention the need to avoid overfilling my server space). Instead, I will make full use of Zoto's 2 gigs' worth of free storage, and host all my pics – social, friends, events, places, nature, everything – there. Ignore the galleries; they are sorted by tags.

Why now?

Why not? There is no better time than now. No, the exams are not a reason why not, not when I've the site skeleton done a long time ago. All it took was a few more clicks and redirects.