Server-side includes have allowed me to finally, finally get some new material up on the site. I’ve been dreading doing updates because after I added a single article, I always had to upload a minimum of half a dozen pages to reflect the new addition, and because the pages were big, it took forever. Every additional article added at least three more pages, and usually more; with a modem that currently gets me online at about 24-26 kbps most days and big, kilobyte-heavy pages, and lots of them, updates turned into a nightmare. Things on the site fell out of date, links went amiss, and I ended up not adding a lot of new material because just keeping everything connected was too big a headache.
Today, after revising the site, I added three new articles and updated the menus with a total of five files. For all three. Little, fast-loading pages.
And while I was doing it, I figured out how to do the site map so that it will automatically update with new material, too. I’m SO happy. All of a sudden, I’m free of the weight of a huge site — it just became little and fast and fun again.
Oh. The new material? Notecarding: Plotting Under Pressure. How to Get There from Here: The Magic of Goals. And Saving the World Through Typing. Also wrote an article for Vision and got most of the outline for Midnight Rain done. And laundry. And homeschooling.
It has been a GOOD day.
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