Ex Urbe

[rushthatspeaks]

As some of you may recall, my dear friend and housemate Thrud occasionally goes to Italy for job reasons, and writes back incredible and impressive travel emails about architecture, history, recipes, the lines at the museums... I've posted some of those emails here (under lock) over the years, and I know there are a couple of you who started reading this journal because of it.

She is in Florence this year and has gotten an actual blog: Ex Urbe. (Note for those of you who know her IRL: she's not linking her legal name to it at this time, and please keep it that way.)

You really want to be reading this. Thrud is the person I know who makes a habit of lurking near a particularly incomprehensible public water fountain in Rome just so she can show people which place to kick and which lever to pull to make it produce water. Thrud also makes a habit of swooping down on lost-looking and sad tourists, showing them everything it isn't possible to find on their own, and taking them to the best gelato shop in the city at the end of it... at which point they pay her in gelato, which is pretty much the racket I've seen run with the best outcome for everybody.

This blog already has her recipe for pasta carbonara, a comprehensive timeline of important events in Florence over the last millennium or so available for download, and a discussion of what it is like living in an apartment with eight belltowers within a three-block surrounding area, among other things. (I expect to share this apartment for about a month in the middle-distance future. Apparently I need to start planning on being a morning person.)

Most importantly, it's charming, funny, informative, and you will enjoy it.

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Huzzah!

Nine

[zxhrue.livejournal.com]

awesomesauce!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

This is wonderful--I wish I could figure out how to get it onto the LJ RSS feed.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I found the actual RSS feed page, but Google Reader doesn't find it. :/

[ckd]

Yeah, and LJ's RSS feed reader can't find it either. Weird.

[weirdquark]

Which feed name are you using? I got Google Reader to find it using the new blog name (http://exurbe.com/?feed=rss) -- no idea if LJ will like it; I don't have a paid account so I can't add new feeds.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I was using that one. Google Reader found it now, but not this morning, for whatever odd reason. Huh.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Argh. Nor does LJ.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I also await hearing how to get the feed syndicated with LJ.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

[ckd]

The URL that the top left slide-out RSS feed icon links to is (a) giving me a 404 and (b) incompatible with your second paragraph's parenthetical. Thrud probably wants to fix both of these problems.

(Actually, a number of those photo links also go to the other domain; it's probably worth her time to make a sweep through to look for other info disclosures like that hiding around.)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

She doesn't want her name to turn up to an easy Google; not sure how careful she's being about it beyond that. I'll talk to her.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

By which I mean that if you Google her name she doesn't want this site to come up. *sigh* Not sure I am expressing myself clearly today.

[thespooniest.livejournal.com]

If you Google her name, you don't get the blog. If you Google the blog, however, her name comes up as the fourth result. It's only a matter of time before the search engines make the connection the other way around.

There are really two things she needs to do to avoid this:

1) Relocate everything on Ex Urbe that references the old site -for example, the RSS feed- back to Ex Urbe instead.
2) Set up a script so that these old references bounce clients to corresponding URLs on the new site using HTTP 301 (the 301 is important: in particular, DO NOT use 302). Leave that script up for at least a few weeks (or permanently).

HTTP 301, among other things, tells clients that the site has moved for good. Search engines respond to this by not listing the old site anymore. The 301 is important; some bouncers use 302, but that only indicates a temporary move, so search engines won't stop listing the old site.

I understand if she doesn't want me to set that up for her: my record as a Webmaster is, shall we say, less than sterling. But an HTTP 301 bouncer isn't hard to write: another developer should be able to make one that does what she needs, given the description above and a list of URLs that need to be bounced.