It was brought to my attention a few minutes ago that my blog comment box has undergone a little overhaul, unbeknownst to me. Old posts still have the old black/blue pop-up box, but the last two, and this one I assume, have some new-fangled thing, which I do not like. For starters, I fear change. And secondly, no matter how many comments I get, the main display page of my blog still lists the comments as being "Comments (0)"
Until I just checked, I actually thought that not a single commenter had written anything on my last two posts. And I was sad.
What has happened, best as I can tell, is that the web-company that designed and operated my comments, Haloscan, has apparently turned into another company, which has in turn changed the commenting system.
Over the past few years, this blog has had a handful of behind-the-scenes technology issues, mostly on account of this blog outdated – by a number of years – the current publishing system used by Blogger. I started this blog back in 2003, before Blogger was acquired by Google, and before comments were even built into the available blog templates. That is why my comments are a pop-up box run by Haloscan, and not the same format as most other people's.
As a matter of fact, Classic Times (originally called In the 'Loops for those with long memories) is so old that the reason the email address classictimes @ gmail even exists is because, as a Blogger member, I was given a free address before they were available to the public – back when everyone was wowed by how much storage space Gmail users were afforded.
With regard to the comments, I had to sign up separately with Haloscan years ago, and Mike went into the HTML code for me and added the right lines in the right places for it to all work.
So yeah, we kick it old school 'round here.
The current look of this blog – the template, if you will – is a dinosaur. It's undergone a billion modifications of my own doing – the blog header graphic, the colours, the links, etc... – but the original template hasn't been offered by Blogger since it's big update a number of years ago.
And because I chose to stick with the old look – I fear change, remember – I've missed out on a number of things afford the new bloggers. For one, I don't have a drag-and-drop screen to move blog elements around easily. Anything I wanna do has to be done by digging through line after line of HTML code, and trust me, that ain't my thing.
Secondly, under my current account, I can't follow other blogs... can't do a number of things that would make my blogging life easier. And about three years ago, I lost the ability to moderate comments because I lost my Haloscan password and username when my old laptop bit the dust. (And it's because of this lack of moderation ability that a certain ridiculous, flame war was recently allowed to take place in the comment section of a particular post... Try and guess which one!?)
Yet still, I resist.
But I guess this is just a long-winded (because some things really don't ever change) way of saying this: I'm thinking that it's time for a change. It probably means changing the look – drastically – of this blog, and maybe even the web address will change, but we'll see.
It will pain me greatly to do it, but perhaps now is the right time to put the ol' blog to rest.
Or maybe I'll just leave it be. I mean, I am pretty fucking lazy.
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