lord of the blog

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Saturday, July 16, 2005

Lord of the Blog

While I'm trying to get my act together and restyle this blog I think I would rather stick to 'Clive' for general use. So no need to call me Lord Clive and certainly not Lord Helpus!

Thanks for the kind comments from here and overseas.   

I have a different problem related to this. I ought to drop the MP bit in the URL but I am told this could break many links so the suggestion is that I keep the existing URL. Any ideas?

Clive, I've noticed people changing the title of their blogs, but not their URL. Being an MP is part of your blog, background and experience. I don't see why you should have to risk breaking all previous links to your blog and go to the trouble of changing your URL after the title of your blog has changed to reflect your elevation. It'd be different if you were in another field, say like a GP or solicitor struck off in disgrace and maintaining a website that misleads people into believing you were still in business.

If there are rules on this issue, maybe they need to be clarified as to what happens when you die, if your blog URL will have to be changed to the late Lord of the Blog.
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I found this in a Q&A somewhere:

Your Own Domain
When you get started with TypePad, your blog is assigned a URL on the TypePad domain: yourblog.typepad.com. To inject some personality into your blog's URL, you can choose what the "yourblog" part of the URL is. But many people—particularly at businesses adding a blog extension to their primary site—want to use their own domain without typepad.com (www.yourblog.com) or use their organization's existing domain (blogname.company.com).

Any of these URL configurations are possible with TypePad, but I found the initial domain mapping setup fairly daunting. TypePad does a good job explaining how to make the changes at your domain registrar (such as Network Solutions, GoDaddy, or pairNIC), but the domain mapping process involves several back-and-forth steps including changing DNS settings with the Domain Registrar and then making modifications in TypePad. The process is complicated by the fact that each domain registrar handles it differently, which clearly is not TypePad's fault, but is a technical process that requires some skill to accomplish.

For a liberal arts graduate, this was all just too much. After two hours of frustration, I gave up. But I really did want my blog's URL to be www.webinknow.com instead of sporting a typepad.com URL. I visited the TypePad Users board at www.typepadusers.com/board/ (not associated with Six Apart), and it turns out many others had difficulty with domain mapping. I quickly found detailed information, exchanged a few emails with Jamie Jamison, the board's moderator, and ended up hiring his company to make the changes for me. The process, although convoluted, was worth the effort and extra expense to have my own domain.

Hi Clive,

My suggestion would be to create a new URL, but keep your old one around and pointing at your blog for at least a year. With a little bit of cunning, you can extract a list of the sites that still refer to clivesoleymp.typepad.com from your web logs, and then wither bother them to change their links, or just wait till the referrals to the old URL slow to a trickle, then cut it off...

"lordclive.me.uk" is available, as is "soley.me.uk" and "lordhelpus.me.uk".

I don't recognise the title of Lord Clive Soley and refuse to call you this, you have always been uncle Clive Soley and that is what you will stay,infact to call you lord will be stretching family titles, if I call you lord, then dad will expect to be called GOD.(i don't think so)
MANY CONGRATULATIONS, maybe we will see you soon, Darran, Helen, Daniel & Gemma.

Was that a Beveridge report?