To those of you still checking this site, I salute you.

You may notice a few enhancements. For one, aside from the obvious cosmetic differences, I’ve removed the cheerfully untrue “Uploading Christmas pictures now. Check back!” proclamation from the front page. That three-month unfulfilled promise, and the stagnant content congealing below it, probably killed off all but the hardcore grandmas as far as regular checkers of this site go.

That old design was too top-heavy when it came to updates, and I was spending hours reformatting, resizing, thumbnailing, coding, testing, viewing, refining, photoshopping, altering, and tweaking each addition. If I altered something even as seemingly inconsequential as the order of the thumbnails, it could necessitate a ripple effect of change throughout the entire picture set, and then it was back to square one. Sometimes square two, sometimes square four, but always a square that sucked in its earlier, lower-numbered squariness. Nothing was easy, but I was too busy mopping to turn off the water.

Additionally, I was never quite satisfied with the design, and each time I changed it, I lost all associated content, as it was usually not fluid or dynamic enough to flow easily into the next design. So rather than continue to devote my most precious resource, time, to this flawed process, I decided to buck up.

I had to crash that Honda.

I took an obvious and oft-noted hiatus from updating, and instead redesigned the site from the toes up, with emphasis on the front-end narrative (which was lacking in the previous image-centric format), and the back-end programming (Wordpress now). Under the new design, everything’s automated, and that’s a lot easier. Instead of spinning repetitively for hours on the aforementioned verbs, all I do now is upload raw content, and the site and server will do all the formatting (via CSS and PHP, for you, the acronym-minded). This frees me from the minutiae, and allows me to focus more on content. So we’ll see how that goes. When I say I and me, I really mean we – look for future posts from Jill.

There are also several new features in this, version 1.0, of the new site.

Images. For one, I’ve abandoned the graphics-intensive thumbnail image groups that made up the bulk of the previous site. If I can get the Javascripting to play well with the Wordpress/PHP, I may resurrect that feature at some point in the future and trot it out for special occasions, but it was requiring far too much time as my go-to. I’m going to attempt to upload new pictures to our Flickr account on a regular schedule. Each time a new picture is added, the ‘Recent Photos’ area at the upper right-hand side of this screen is automatically updated with thumbnails of the latest uploads. I’ll keep the pictures posted there in albums grouped by month and year, and anyone who cares to can peruse the archives with that in mind. Sometimes I’ll even post pictures here, within the text. When I do that, I’ll include the category ‘photo’ on that entry so that all posted images can be easily recalled.

Comments. Visitors will now have the ability to leave comments in response to particular postings or pictures, here or in Flickr. Within Flickr, you’ll need to be registered and logged in (to Flickr) to comment, which is kind of an arse pain. To leave a comment on billandjill, just click on the ‘comments’ link beneath each post, and set it loose - no registration or login needed. Feel free to try it out. Please.

Posted By. Bill or Jill? Now it’ll say, right beneath the title of the post. So you’ll know right off if you’re reading something from She Who Keeps the Ship Running Smoothly, or He Who Dresses Them Funny.

Archives. All posts will be archived and searchable. Each new post will occupy the top spot on this page, marching previous posts one spot deeper into the archives. Specific posts can be searched for by keyword, category, or by selecting a month - all these options are available on the sidebar menu. For example, if you wanted to find this post in the archives, you could simply enter ‘hardcore grandmas’ in the search field to the right. (Note: a search on Google for the same term will return slightly different results). I’ll convert some of the older content from the site’s previous incarnations and deposit it into its relative time period here, for continuity and historical accuracy.

The site’s content should grow into a repository of more trivial blathering, banal postings, and personal photos about the goings-on in our lives than any one person would ever care to know. And if I said we there, I meant I that time. I wouldn’t characterize Jill’s posts as trivial or banal. In fact, I for one, can’t wait to read them. Point is, from here on out, everything will be saved and retrievable, if you care about such things.

More to follow.

*saluting*