I first created “The Finite Monkey” when I wanted a place to post stories and pictures about my 2002 World Cruise aboard the Crystal Symphony. A blog would have been a great format for that, but blog hadn’t yet become a household word, and I wasn’t aware of them yet, so my original site was old-fashioned HTML, and a pain to maintain. When I discovered blogging, I knew it was the direction I wanted to go, so I evaluated the (free) alternatives available at the time, and decided Movable Type offered the best combination of power, customizability, and ease of use. Movable Type is still a great blogging tool, but the blogging landscape has changed, and when I recently took a fresh look at the alternatives available, Wordpress emerged as the new favorite.

I’ve had a Wordpress version of my site quietly installed for a month or more now, and have been secretly whipping it into shape before I took the step of replacing my Movable Type-based blog with the new version. I’ve been reviewing, testing, tweaking, and trouble-shooting various themes, layouts, plug-ins, and assorted other bells and whistles, as well as creating some new goodies for regular use, like a logo I’ve been wanting for a long time, some category labels, and even a “favicon” so the little icon people see when they’re on a TFM page should be a custom icon, rather than the generic icon it otherwise defaults to. If I waited until everything were just the way I wanted it, I’d never be ready to launch the new Wordpress version of my site, but I’m happy enough with the progress I’ve made to make the jump. If you notice things broken, it could be because I’m in the midst of making additional tweaks, or it could be that you’ve discovered a problem I’m not aware of yet. In case it’s the latter, I would appreciate an email or note in the comments alerting me to the problem. (Old entries are especially likely to be broken, as they may require some re-formatting, and that will be an ongoing task for a while.)

The new look won’t magically spawn fresh content any more than the old look did, but I hope you’ll agree the new look is an improvement over the old. I can assure you it’s an improvement for me in terms of ease of administration and maintenance. If you haven’t visited the site for a few months, you’ll also find a few fresh entries (three in one month!) to go along with the new look. Enjoy.