I’m back

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Welcome back to Just Frances! I’m really excited to be back up and running and hope you’re excited, too.

I must start this post by giving credit to the amazing Martin Ridgway for taking time out of his personal life to re-build and re-design Just Frances as a beautifully simple site that focuses on content and design. It is a bespoke site designed by a true professional, rather than a template-based design that I had been cobbling together with my limited CSS knowledge.

I am so humbled to have been given such a wonderful gift and can’t thank him and his fabulous wife, Sarah, enough for everything. I could gush on and on about the both of them, but it all boils down to this: I am blessed and lucky to have such talented, kind, and generous friends.

The new site has been completely rebuilt using ExpressionEngine software. I am still learning the interface, but I do believe it will be better than what I was using in the past. It is more secure and therefore less likely to cause trouble with the operation of Just Frances. It is also built as a responsive site, which means that everything should scale and resize based on the size of your computer or mobile device. (And wouldn’t you know it? Martin is an expert in responsive web design. Isn’t he clever?)

Now, even though the site looks amazing, I have to admit that it’s not done yet. And the bits that aren’t done are on my task list so I’d best get busy! But, since the site is ready and I’m impatient, I’m going to start using it anyhow.

And I’m using two thinly veiled excuses for that decision: (1) It will force me to work faster on my task list and (2) it will give me a chance to troubleshoot in a live environment.

So, here are some things you need to know:

  1. My last official Just Frances post was October 5, but I did start using a temporary blog in mid-November. Those posts have been imported to Just Frances, the first of which can be found here. (You can use the Next/Previous post feature to scroll through anything you may have missed.)
  2. Subscriptions from the old interface have been lost. My sincere apologies for that. If you would like to subscribe (or re-subscribe) please provide your email through the contact form. I am still learning the subscription system at the moment, so notifications might be a bit sporadic at first.
  3. Some features have been removed such as the star rating system on posts and the thumbs up/down for comments. These will not be replaced. Also, the sharing options have been scaled back to reflect only the most common platforms (and the ones I frequent the most).
  4. If you find a broken link, please feel free to let me know. But also please know that I am still working on replacing links so I may still get to it. As of this writing, links on posts prior to October 2011 should all be working.
  5. If you have any questions or comments in general, please feel free to contact me or to comment on a post.

Right, now that I’m done with this post, I guess I’d best get back to updating others!

Happy reading!

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