For the few of you who follow this blog or are connected with me on Facebook, you may have noticed that some things have been moved around a bit. After a long time of thinking about it, I finally created a main page for my domain www.jonridinger.com, so I moved this blog to lfk.jonridinger.com. I thought about moving it to just "blog.jonridinger.com", but in the end decided to use the initials LFK (Life From Kent) as the identifier for this blog since I have two other blogs.
The big hold-up for me getting this main page created was finding a design program that could create something I actually liked and was easy to change as needed. I have very basic and limited knowledge in writing HTML, so I can't just create a website without some kind of design program. Google offers a website maker, but the designs are very limited to the point that no matter what I did, I couldn't create something I liked. I finally did find a website called IM Creator, at http://www.i-m.co. Not only is it free, but they have several templates to choose from, all of which can easily be altered, or you can just start blank with tons of options. Seeing as I just wanted to create a good looking entry page to connect all my blogs and other websites, I didn't need anything more than some creative leeway and detail control.
The site does have some subscription options, mostly if you want to use it for web hosting and domain name registration/parking. Since I already have Google for the blogs and the domain name is registered there as well, I didn't need any of the extras, though I certainly would recommend them based on my experience thus far. To get around not being able to use my own domain name for the website since I'm not a subscriber, I learned a little about and set up a domain forwarding, so my JonRidinger.com domain redirects to the page's actual address, but it's a "masked" forward so the browser just shows my domain name. The same is true for any of the web pages that are published with this IM Creator account. So far I have done a new "About Me" page with it and I plan to move my resume page to this as well rather than have it as a sub page of this blog. The "About" page linked at the top here has always been more about the blogs themselves than me, so I plan to fine-tune that page again and make specific ones for each blog, and then have a link to the "About Me" page too.
My thinking is that I use the "JonRidinger.com" address as a reference all the time, not only for my professional email address, but also as a link in my email signature and in general. Now, rather than come to the website and land right here on my blog and whatever topic is most recent, instead a visitor comes to a page where they can see who I am and can choose which aspect they'd like to check out. I think the way it was previously, this blog was the landing point for anyone looking for information on me and it really has no real focus other than a way for me to express myself and share experiences. Now, when I refer someone to my site, they can see more than just my latest opinion piece or fun event. It also puts this blog in proper perspective of being simply one of my creative outlets as opposed to the total definition of me.
All that said, be sure to update any bookmarks you have to my blog. Simply replace "www" with "lfk" and the link will work fine. If there is no "www" in the bookmark, just add the "lfk" before "jonridinger.com". Also be sure to check out the new page at www.jonridinger.com and also click on the "About Me" box at the bottom (trust me, you can't miss it!).
