Pardon the mess

So here's the story.

About a year ago, I started a 2-pronged effort to revitalize Eclectic Randomness.

1. Increase options and reduce delivery time.

This first part was simple, in terms of what needed to be done. I needed better vendors, and a better color changing solution. I needed to be able to offer more products in more colors, and on those items with color change, I needed to break through the 12-button wall on menus. Better vendors and a roomier store were relatively easy (Healy's closure was about this, it was too darned small!), and we saw those show up last autumn. The appearance changer HUD followed fairly soon thereafter, and ER got the Jouet Doll and the Plateau boots as part of that.

A second phase of that part is still ongoing, in that once I redid the color change stuff using the new HUD system, I'd need to get some kind of locking functionality to replace that currently in use in the old products. Like I say, that's still work in progress.

But all of that.. the store, the vendors, the new scripts and so on, was just one half of the project. The other half was:

2. Reduce operating costs.

This part of the project also began around the same time. The closure of the Fusilier (G rated) store was part of this. Migrating away from the "Store Mailing List" in favour of the "Store Group" was part of this as well.

The mailing lists rely on a mySQL database to get the user IDs for mailing the notecards out. It's a relatively simple thing, but it's costing me money every year to keep the server space just to host that database.

Of course, I also make use of the hosting for my store's webpage, and my personal blog (both of which are just pretty simple wordpress blogs.) But the bottom line is, I've been trying to find ways to 'clear out' of that web space, because it really is just too darned expensive for what I use it for.

Over the next few weeks, I'll begin migrating things over to a new set of blogs over on Blogger.com. I've already begun with the ER website, building out the framework for that and getting it looking decent.

When the moves are complete, I'll set up auto-forwarding at the old pages, so you will easily be able to find them, but here's the ER link in the meantime:

ER Site: http://eclectic-randomness.blogspot.com

I haven't quite decided where this blog needs to go. I may end up making a blog linked to the "WinterVentura" google+ account, or I might make it a bit less SL related.

Stay tuned for news on that front.