A good soul emailed me:
When I click on your web site with the home address http://www.grannybuttons.com
It defaults to http://www.grannybuttons.com/granny_buttons/2008/05/narrowboat-worl.html
Is this how it should work?
That's a sensible question, and I hope I haven't misunderstood it.
My short answer: "You've clicked on the address of an individual post. The home page is still 'www.grannybuttons.com', but underlying it is a system of byzantine complexity.
Yes, it's clunky and I'd love it to be simpler. It's a legacy of my ignorance when I started over five years ago. I hope to change it, but it will mean a lot of work and confusion and there's too much going on in my life right now.
The best thing to do is try not to look at the technical address; just sit tight and trust the links!
The moral is: When you start a website or blog, try to think ahead, like I didn't.
The longer answer is a bit dull.
My blog is hosted on Typepad, and underlying www.grannybuttons.com is my Typepad home page, which is (under the skin) http://grannybuttons.typepad.com. This lists the last week or so of posts.
Click on the title of one of my posts on the home page and you go to the full individual post on its own. This expands, allowing you to comment, etc. The post's address includes the year/month and part of the title. Thus the post you mention would originally have been
http://grannybuttons.typepad.com/2008/05/narrowboat-worl.html
All logical enough.
However, I started a second blog for my general stuff, and behind the scenes Typepad took the name of each blog and added it after the main URL, so that all GB posts became automatically filed under
http://grannybuttons.typepad.com/granny_buttons/
This was my mistake. By then, my routine and reputation had become too 'embedded' - so to try to reduce confusion I had the main domain 'remapped' so that the internet now sees grannybuttons.typepad.com as grannybuttons.com
This, at least, reduces the address slightly and removes the Typepad 'branding'. (About my 'other' blog, well, it didn't last long.)
Since then, GB has rather become a beast on my back, driving me on. It's soaked up my time for no profit, but if I stop now (or change the address suddenly) I'll quickly lose what little profile I've gained.
By the way, I believe that an active blog is a good 'calling card', especially for a job application. You can get a much better idea of what I'm like from my blog than from the dry, stilted words of a CV or resumé. So I'll only change things with great care and a lot of forethought.
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