Just until a few hours ago, the Schatenseite — my main homepage — was running with the Typo3 content management system. I installed it about twelve years ago, and I’m still certain that people can build awesome sites with it. However, Typo3 maintenance takes more engagement than I’m willing to invest. And Typo3 as a CMS was too big for my little page, anyway — which was clear from the start…

I’m running my blog since 2004, and I think most of my content fits better into a blog than into a classic ‘homepage’ format. So old projects are ‘fading out’, instead of me taking them offline. So I moved my blog to the main page. I preserved parts of my old homepage by ordering some articles into the blog. I kept chronoligical order with this, so what I wrote in 2006 will be found in 2006, even if I copied the content in 2015. I put a sticky article onto the front page, so it’s easy to find the main project pages.

Ages ago, I heard a very wise sentence. Unfortunately, I don’t remember who said that:

Important URLs never change.

I tried to honor that with my relaunch. So on one hand, the most important pages of the old Typo3-site should lead to the right articles in this blog. And on the other hand all old blog URLs should lead to the new location, too. So most links and feeds should continue working properly. People with links to my page, especially those who subscribed the feed, should check if they know about the new locations. For the time being, I’ll keep the rewrite rules intact. But who knows what’s coming…

There’s one more thing I introduced to the blog: parts of the old homepage were already translated into — my very broken — english. I want to expand the english part in the future, so from now on this is a bilingual blog. However, not for the whole content. I like how WordPress keeps the page with the Polylang plugin. I don’t have to translate every single article. But rest assured: the main parts will be available in english, too.

I’d really like to hear what you think about the relaunch. Especially of course, if there still are errors to fix. Does the page look OK? Do the feeds still work for you…?