What the bleep does that mean, right? Well, in the medieval times, when one king would croak, and a new one took his place the town criers would shout "The King is dead! The King is dead! Long live the King!" This was their way of saying the old King had died, and there was a new one, who they hoped would live a long and successful life. So the overly dramatic headline is my way of saying my old site is gone, and there is now a new & improved ClarkPlaysGuitar.com, which we hope will hang in there for a very long time.
Here's the scoop:
This site has been hosted by a variety of companies over the years. The various moves from one hosting company to another have been dictated largely by technical considerations. My first version of the site was not able to process sales of any sort very easily, and eventually I moved to a hosting service that made that functionality easier. Eventually I changed again because I just could not control the look of the site to my satisfaction, and the next hosting service allowed me to control everything to the tiniest degree. Unfortunately this meant I had to get pretty good at writing HTML, which is a coding language for web sites, and integrate complicated e-commerce software into the site. While this was fulfilling in terms of what my site looked like, it was murder to maintain.
So I moved again, to a musician-friendly hosting service called HostBaby. I've been mostly happy with the results, but HostBaby has decided to close up shop, so to speak. They are selling out to another company called Bandzoogle, but the sites won't all simply transfer over to the new service without a fair amount of tweaking. Aaaand... you know me, I can't just take the easy route, lol.
So, for the past few weekends I have been working behind the scenes to completely rebuild ClarkPlaysGuitar dot com. I'm working on some pretty cool new features, like a section for Secret Club Members only, plus a streaming feature, improved storefront, and a more sleek overall look. As of today (January 28, 2020) the essentials are in place, and I am working on the rest. Since my free time is pretty much limited to a few hours on the weekends these days (see the previous post for details on that), I'm not getting much work done on the mix for Obscurotica, but it is nearly done, so I am trying not to worry about that. HostBaby is shutting things down on January 31, which means getting the new site done and ready for you has been my current top priority.
I hope you all enjoy the new site, which has many familiar elements, and yet will feel brand new, because it is! And it is just the first of some cool things happening in 2020. Stay tuned!
Until next time, live well & rock hard!