When I started blogging on Fury in 1997 it was by hand: editing an HTML file, copying and pasting the last entry and replacing the content. Later on, around 1999, I wrote a content management system (okay, okay, 'blog engine') to handle posting and rendering, partly because I wanted to have the flexibility to add functionality however I saw fit, but mostly because there was almost no blogging software out there. Greymatter was pretty darned new, and Blogger wouldn't be launched for another few months.

Since that initial launch I added many features such as comments, multiple-inclusion categories (later dubbed 'tags'), themes and on-page analytics, months or years before they were incorporated into mainstream blog software.

That 'make' ('makeshift' would be more appropriate) spirit has continued even though the time I have available to work on this tech has dropped to almost nothing in the last few years. In the meantime there are so many elegant packaged solutions for so many of the problems older blogs face. It's hard for a stubborn old coot to put down a few of his tools and admit that the finely crafted new-fangled stuff is just as good -- if not better -- and certainly a lot cheaper (time=money) than the old-fashioned way.

While I'm not ready to move Fury to a mainstream blogging platform (I still have some ideas on the nature and framework of blogging that aren't in line with most CMSes), I'm starting with baby steps. Tonight I routed Fury's RSS feed to be handled by Feedburner. The first step to making a better site is understanding what you have, and along with MeasureMap, FeedBurner is a great tool for seeing not just the amount, but the nature of the traffic this site gets.

What does that mean to you, loyal reader? Nuthin'. You shouldn't see any change as the result of this shift. The old RSS urls redirect without a fare-thee-well, and things should just hum along like they always have, only maybe a little better.

Well, I've got a kitten sleeping on my typing arm now, so I'd best be off...