Nobody told me that converting the site to WordPress would be this painful…
September 4, 2011, 6:20 PM
So the conversion of Schumin Web to WordPress is going along quite well for the most part, aside from the odd having-trouble-locating-an-image kind of issue, where I really have to go hunting through the discs to find an image. That’s annoying, but not insurmountable, since I am a bit of a pack rat when it comes to these things, as I keep everything, whether it’s actually worth keeping or not.
First of all, my organization in the early days was less than efficient. While I arranged photos that were taken together into folders like I still do today, they were not content-neutral in relation to the site. For most of my photos, it’s arranged by date with a note as to the general topic of the day. For instance, if it was a protest, the folder would be called, for instance, “October Rebellion – 10-19-2007”. But with the really old material, stuff was arranged under “Miscellaneous”, “Photography”, “College Life”, and “Life and Times”, and then by date and topic. And since the time that I arranged the material on the disc, some material has changed locations on the site, and some things aren’t on the site anymore. It definitely makes researching photos a challenge, that’s for sure.
But the most painful part of this is actually reading the old material. I’m currently working on material that was added to the site in August 2000. So I’ve gotten through all of the old quote articles from the beginning up to “FOR ASSISTANCE PUSH 3 INCH HELP BUTTON”. And some of this material is just inane. These “articles” were just a paragraph (a long one if I’m lucky) and maybe, just maybe, I’ll actually make a point. As a friend mentioned, though, it is kind of interesting to look back and see what was important back then. But some of this is just painful to read. This is actually one of the better quotes from the period, about abuse of warnings on AOL Instant Messenger. This actually has decent length and makes a point. This one, criticizing an “I agree with Russ” campaign at JMU, is also a pretty good one. But most of this stuff wasn’t nearly so good. Take this one, about how all of my stuff likes to malfunction on me. I don’t know quite what point I was trying to make, and you can kind of tell. And there are more like that. All I have to say is, no wonder people made fun of Schumin Web back in the day. The material on there back in those days was somewhat inane. This must be like my initiation into this WordPress conversion, because this early stuff is kind of painful to read. The earliest material did suck, and definitely would not make the cut on the modern-day site. But it is part of the history, whether it is well-polished or not, I suppose.
Thankfully, though, the material really starts to improve in late 2000, and by the end of 2000 and into 2001, the quote article really takes its complete form, becoming a fully-formed article where I actually do make a point. And some of my quote articles are indeed ones that I really like to look back on, like this one where I call Santa Claus a pervert.
But first I have to get through this part where the material is crummy. I can’t even restore the photos in a lot of this old material because they’re not even my images (no digital camera back then), and they have long since vanished from the Internet.
Song: Two people in Power Rangers costumes play patty-cake.
Quote: So rereading all this old material definitely makes me look at the site in the old days in a whole new light, that's for sure...
Categories: Schumin Web meta