Now that my recent site overhaul project is nearly complete, I thought it would be useful to share my carefully developed “plan of attack.” The following seven-step strategy is designed to facilitate the entire renovation by logically ordering events and breaking down complex tasks. Upon execution, the following plan is designed to improve overall site functionality, presentation and structure, while factoring in several critical parameters:

• Modular time organization — due to my hectic schedule, it is necessary to break large projects down into manageable chunks.
• Separation of main site from test site — I need a clear distinction between Perishable Press and my many test blogs, pages, and projects.
• Separation of main content from tangential content — distinguishing between main content and other material (e.g., private content, FTP files, etc.) is critical.
• Facilitation of future WordPress upgrades — keeping up with WordPress is important. Before the site overhaul, upgrading was nearly impossible. In fact, the primary thrust of this site makeover is aimed at making it easier to stay current with WordPress.

Thus far, adhering to this plan has helped to eliminate confusion by simplifying an otherwise convoluted project. With this plan firmly in mind, stepping through the entire process happened in a clear, nearly mechanical fashion. Without a doubt, being prepared provided an expediency and thoroughness that would have otherwise remained elusive. Is this the “perfect” plan for renovating a rather large, preexisting site? Probably not. Will you learn something about preparing for and executing WordPress and other site upgrades by reading it? Probably. I suppose, in any case, that even if readers find the proceeding plan all but useless, posting it online is great for prosperity and may even serve useful as future reference material. So, without further ado, here is an outline of the activity recently unfolding behind the scenes here at Perishable Press.

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Ladies and gentlemen, things have become a little too comfortable around here. Themes are displaying with nary a hitch, files are being downloaded as expected, URLs are served like butter, and the site is experiencing fewer errors (PHP, 404, etc.) than ever before. After two years of perpetual updating, posting, fixing, and tweaking, Perishable Press is finally performing exactly as desired (all things considered, of course). Yes sir, things are running quite smooth indeed..

A little too smooth. Sure, given the comfortable equilibrium that I am currently enjoying, it would be very easy to kick back, get lazy, and just coast on autopilot for the next two or three years. Maybe drop a new theme every six or seven months and call it good. After all, I have finally developed a comfortable writing and posting schedule as well. So what’s the problem, then? Why change things now? Why deliberately create more work, hassle, and stress for myself? Surely, there is a good reason.

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Looking ahead at the events planned for this year, I feel the need to completely restructure, reorganize, and streamline my entire digital universe. This will take a sweet amount of time, I realize, but given the complex behemoth that my digital archive has become due to the accumulation of over seven years’ worth of projects, reformats, and acquisitions, the time is now.

It all started out simply, with my first computer a mere two folders, “art” and “business,” were all that I needed to keep things in order. As time progressed, there were a few digital expansions, where loads of new software, hardware, documentation, support files, and resulting experimental files were heaped onto the already flimsy organizational structure that my “archive” had at that time become. Then there was college, various lines of employment, and a million scanned documents determined too important to simply toss. By this time, my artistic output had increased as well, with bandwidth intensive projects like Dead Letter Art, F-Disk Media, and StopSystem, my then new 250GB external hard drive was almost full. Along the way, I’m afraid, most attempts at “starting fresh” and reorganizing everything were shortsighted if not temporarily efficient.

So now, after having attained a small foothold on the internet with a newly designed, all-powerful Perishable Press website, I have taken a few steps back to contemplate the “big picture” and evaluate an optimal plan of attack. I truly cannot believe how inefficient and unorganized my system has become. Truly, it is a mess.

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