Test, test, test.

Oh, I can be so silly. Jeff, Jeff, Jeff. 

I use the rather wonderful Squarespace for my blog. I really love it; it isn’t free like Wordpress but in my opinion the cost is more than balanced out by great ease-of-use and powerful tools. 

I’ve been really excited about the new Squarespace Version 6 that is in beta. It looks so fantastic! Wowza. And the social integration is great. A few months ago I requested a beta invitation and I got one!

And thus the trap closes. 

It started innocently enough. I had a few spare minutes today between meetings and thought, what the heck? I’ll upgrade my blog. The beta has been running for months — I’m sure the kinks are sorted out. Right? Right?!?

I logged in, chose an awesome new template, and hit migrate. This is going to be awesome! And then… 90 minutes of panic and frustration ensued as — of course — none of the pictures migrated over correctly, the new user interface left me confused, and my custom domains were changed. The blogger’s worst nightmare: Editing your DNS entry. It means something has gone wrong. Very wrong.

It’s all sorted out now and I’m mostly feeling stupid for ignoring the advice I give my clients: Test, test, test!

That new blog is going to be awesome. The toolset looks incredible. But I think I’ll experiment first…

Pining For Squarespace 6

I use Squarespace for my site and despite a few niggles I’m very happy with it. I don’t know where I’ve been hiding, but I just today found out about their announcement several months ago regarding the latest update, Squarespace 6. Looks killer. 

By the way, has anyone else noticed that the Google fonts I’m using looking awful on Windows? Well, I sure didn’t — at least until tonight that is! I’m going to have to change the style, because the wonderful, smooth, anti-aliased type I see on my Mac looks absolutely horrid on Windows. Whoops. 

Postscript: I’ve switched from the very cool Blueprint style to the equally-cool-but-seemingly-more-Windows-friendly Canopy style. Hope you enjoy the green. Let’s see if it grows on us. 

2011 NTC

Well, I’m sitting in Reagan National waiting to return home from the 2011 NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference and am just reflecting on what a long, energizing, and content-rich week it was. With all of the thought and momentum I’ve been putting to our client engagements and Event 360 blog, I’ve definitely let this one slip. In fact, I’ve let most of my social presence atrophy. NTC was a reminder of the power of not only institutional ideas, but of personal ones as well.

Over the next couple of weeks I’m taking some time off, and hoping to do some thinking about this blog and how I can use it to communicate some of the great things we’re learning about fundraising, analytics, mission, and how they work together. I’m excited to crank up the volume.