AustenBlog, powered by WordPress

I would like to announce the grand opening of AustenBlog, a compendium of news about Jane Austen in popular culture. This weblog probably will only be interesting to those who like Jane Austen, of course, but I’d like to announce it here and publicly thank some folks who were helpful to me while I was putting it together.
Root, of course, and his Gemini Template (as we must call it now) stand very high in our esteem. While my friend and I were struggling through our design process, I linked to the template, and Root followed our cybertrail back to the test blog. I appreciate the help and the cheerleading but most of all thanks for the template! It really made the design process much easier. I was able to concentrate on the colors and background and other details and not have to worry too much about positioning and validation. This template validated at every step of the way. Thanks, Root! 🙂
I also installed several hacks and plugins. Laughing Lizard’s one-step backup and comment preview and Scott Hansen’s Auto-Close Comments plugin (good one!) really increased our functionality and we hope will prevent comment spammers from allowing us to enjoy the weblog. And thanks to Squidfingers for the pretty, pretty background that I coveted from the moment I first saw it and which inspired the rest of the design.
Many thanks to the WordPress development team. The online Jane Austen fandom tends to be rather stodgy and set in its ways technologically, if not absolutely tech-phobic, and I plan to drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century with this weblog. Of course, they could just ignore it entirely. 😉 Thanks again!