W♥M

Since September 1st, I have been really busy backing up the TypePad website, month by month… starting in August 2025 and working backward to January 2007. With everyone also backing up, they knocked the host offline for a few days, so I was worried for a while about getting all my data off of TypePad. It’s all fixed now, so as of a few days ago, I’ve grabbed all the pages and their thumbnails (displayed images). The next step is to drill down and download all the full images… which might not be possible, given the short time frame. We only have a few weeks before they pull the plug.

Missing Contents
I discovered that we’re missing some contents from 2007 to 2012. That’s a problem. I’ve been re-adding and back-dating the posts. Unfortunately, WordPress is treating these old articles as new, so you may get newsletter and alerts if you subscribe through the email service.

Hopefully in a few days, I’ll be re-adding in all Dave’s Jazz Note series, in the meantime you can browse through the published posts.

The other problem that is keeping me busy is that WordPress has its own rules, so all our TypePad articles are not properly formatted and looks terrible. What I’ve been doing is manually updating page by page, and this is a painstaking process.

Moving Domain
The original domain name, weheartmusic.com should now automatically be mirrored to wheartm.com. I didn’t realize that when I moved the domain, I also had to re-add instructions for the MX records (for our email service). Then services like BlueSky requires a domain CNAME for their product… Next time, I’ll make a note to back up all the DNS records before moving.

At the same time, I am annoyed that all the DNS records didn’t just automatically be forwarded to the new Domain service. That’s something seemingly simple that they could have done for less headaches for me.

Search Engines
For the last few years, we’ve been enjoying very high ranking with Google, in the news department, in the images department, etc. The last data that Google sent me was that we were getting 2.4 million “Impressions” (like when you search for something, our content shows up). But only about 4,000 click through.

Unfortunately, with a brand-new website, since August 28th, we’re starting at ground zero as far as Google ranking is concerned. In a recent search, wheartm didn’t even show up until page 12… so we have a long way to go.

I’m willing to give anything a try, so I’ve installed Yoast, which will try and help us format our content for “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO). Of course, it hates how we format our posts, with images floating to the right or setlists and other data on a sidebar. They claim it makes it hard to read. I’ll keep it in mind, but right now ignoring their suggestions. The best part about the Yoast is that they’ve allowed us to give alternate names, for example “We Heart Music” and “weheartmusic” as alternate names.

Speaking of Google, we’ve submitted wheartm.com, and based on our 10,000 pages, Google said it will take time to index everything so it can serve up relevant searches. But it’s going to take time. We’re only officially 20 days old. I’ve also submitted to Bing. Not sure if there are other search engines we should look at?

Socials
I’m not one for being on social media, but you have to go where the people are. Since we’re starting fresh, we have to make our presence known by using social media to share links to our website and help build up an audience. Our social links are as follows: Twitter, Instagram, BlueSky, and Facebook.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say for now.