My own website, finally

Making my own website has been on my list of new years resolutions for the past 2 years. I finally got around to doing it yesterday.

Signing up for web hosting with DreamHost took about 10 minutes. 5 of those minutes were spent trying to pick a domain name, since the interesting combinations of “Jess” and “Lee” are all taken. I ended up using my middle name Yoko and registered jessyoko.com.

Setting up WordPress MU was a 1-click installation, plus a few forms to fill out. However, it took an hour to import all my old Xanga posts using xanga.r because Xanga has formatting problems in its RSS feed, so I had to manually fix some things.

Customizing the visual design of the site took the most time. I spent an hour browsing through the WordPress Theme Directory to find a good design template. I couldn’t find one I really liked, so I took one that I kind of liked and edited it in PhotoShop and Firebug. Still not happy with it — there’s aliasing on the tree graphic, some minor visual bugs in IE7, and the overall look is a bit too girly. Christine said it reminded her of a Threadless t-shirt.

But now I finally have my own website. Welcome to jessyoko.com. I’ll be hosting my blog here instead of on Xanga or AliveNotDead.