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It has been 6 months since I started working on this blog and I thought I should take a look back on how’s it been going. There has been ups and downs but mostly it has been very positive experience. My main goal from the start was just to have fun with it and I achieved that. Also it definitely has been a learning experience… and I’m not only talking about the technical side. I’m not new to writing but it still surprised me how much work writing one post takes.

How does one write with those Moonkin claws then

Slowly. Average amount of time it takes me to write one post is 5-7 hours. First I stare at the screen for few minutes, then write one sentence, stare at it for couple minutes, scratch my head a bit and write another sentence. Lots of coffee infused creative breaks too when I just listen to random music, sip my coffee and plan what to write next (np: The Dresden Dolls – My Alcoholic Friends). I’m not sure why it takes so long.. can’t I come up with things very fast or do I just want to really really think it through first. Oh well.. it can only get faster over time so whatever. This is main reason why I don’t write more often than roughly once a week.

After the text is done it takes me maybe an hour to do the artwork and code. It may be just screenshots and working with Model Viewer but it does take some time. Especially if I don’t have a clear idea what I want to do and just mess around to see what would be nice. One thing I hate in Wordpress is the visual editor. I tried it once and the post looked absolutely terrible and I just couldn’t get it to do what I wanted. Positioning pictures was a total nightmare. Good thing I’m familiar with html to some extent so I could just write my own code and get exactly the kind of results I wanted.

Biggest challenges

Technical stuff. Since I wanted to do a self hosted blog and I had no prior experience about Wordpress or any other blogging platform it took a lot of reading before I could start. I kept reading and re-reading the instructions and to be honest it just felt more confusing everytime. Eventually I just tried to install it and see if I got it right or not… and you know what I got it right the first time. Huh. Guess it sounded more difficult on paper than it actually was.

That obstacle I passed but there’s another I still haven’t solved and it is absolutely driving me insane. Talking about properly setting up the RSS feed here. Yes it’s up there and it works but it does not work the way I’d want it to work. Problem is it’s not showing full text in feed. I’ve set it to display ‘full text’ from options but no result. And I read something that some older RSS versions are not able to display full text but RSS 2 should and I think I’ve set it to that… I think. I’ve done googling, reading through Wordpress and Feedburner manuals, various forums and Elune knows what else but I just can’t get it to work. I realise it is terribly annoying to subscribe to a blog and not be able to read posts on conviniently on your feed reader and I apologise my readers for that. If anyone knows what might be the problem and how to solve it please send me an email and be my hero.

Time for fun

There’s a few posts I’ve really enjoyed writing.

One Druid’s Journey

The story of my main character was so much fun to write. And not just to write but also go through literally hundreds of old screenshots from times long gone. Raiding Molten Core in Tier 0? Feels like a lifetime ago. This post also has attracted most reader comments so I’m glad others have found it fun to read too.

Changes to make Scarlet Monastery heroic

I’m sure everyone has an opinion about what classic instance they would want to see revived. I did too and when this topic came up at Blog Azeroth I could not let it pass. As I was writing this I actually was at Scarlet Monastery.. checking out the rooms bosses where in to figure out what kind of mechanics would fit in and I also read through their current abilities to see what was cool and could work at higher level too and what I would change or add.

Big Game Hunter

I love reminiscing. I’m not saying everything was better back in the dawn of WoW but things definitely were more crazy which makes it so fun topic.

In the year 2000

For now I will keep going as I have now but I also do have some plans to evolve the site a bit. I don’t want to say anything definite because I don’t know can I pull it off in the end but let’s just say I’m looking on different ways to add more content besides just text. What’s kinda holding me back right now is lack of disk space to work with. Yes it sounds silly but I don’t really want to delete anything and I’m running pretty tight budjet at the moment so… Maybe something comes up early next year. We’ll see.

As far as writing goes I tried to make clear from the start that even though this is a balance druid blog I will also write about more general things. However if I can look at those other things from druid perspective I will do that. I think it has worked fairly well so far and I will keep at it. Completely non-WoW posts will probably appear eventually but they will always be in minority.

Lastly I want to thank all my readers for their interest and support. I know I have hardly advertised this site anywhere so how you found your way here is a total mystery to me. I hope I can keep you interested in future too.

/hugs

-DP