Moving from Mac OS 9 on my old Mac 8500 to Mac OS X (Tiger) on this iMac has been easier than I expected, with only a few minor problems that were resolved relatively quickly.
The only serious problem I encountered was when I - for no reason I can find - decided to change from using Eudora to using Apple Mail.
I've been perfectly happy with Eudora for well over a decade, and I have many thousands of emails stored in archive mailboxes for fast reference, should I need them.
I started Apple Mail and imported all my old messages in Eudora. I watched as thousands of message subject lines in dozens of inboxes flashed across the screen during the importing process.
When it was done, I looked in the inbox and couldn't find any of those messages. I searched on the Internet, read the documentation, and still couldn't find a good definition of the problem or a solution.
After sitting back and smacking myself on the forehead - never fix something that isn't broke, I reminded myself - I dumped Apple Mail.
It took a couple of hours on this slow dial-up connection to download the new OS X version of Eudora. Installation was fast and easy.
I expected to have to spend hours reconfiguring everything, but - to my great surprise - when I opened the settings, everything was as I left it on the old computer. I guess I must have done the right thing when I copied everything over to this computer and installed the old version on OS 9.
All my messages were there. All the filters - over a hundred of them - were present and working.
I felt like I was back at home sitting in a comfortable chair. I had email access, again!
With that accomplished, yesterday I set out to install Radio Userland and see if I could get my blog working again.
Downloading went relatively quickly and installation was a breeze.
When I started Radio Userland (RU), however, there was a problem. It kept trying to launch MS Internet Explorer, and I just don't use that browser.
I didn't understand what was going on. I'd been using Mozilla on my old system with few problems, and I was starting RU with Firefox running. I thought RU was basically browser agnostic and I expected RU to use it with no problems - but it didn't.
After searching online, I still found no solution.
Finally, a couple of hours ago, I opened Safari and then started RU. Success!
Blogging went fast - much faster than I've ever experienced with RU. Previously, RU was a chore to use, but it was so powerful and flexible, I suffered through it with only a few complaints now and then.
Now, it is blazingly fast. A joy to use.
The only thing that slows it down is when it FTPs all the changes to ISucceedByHelpingYouSucceed.com after I post to the blog. It was particularly slow this time, because I changed the design on the templates and when I posted it had to upload all the old postings along with the new one. This took some time, because of my dial-up connection.
After the complete update was done, blogging a new post goes quickly.
Now, to the real reason I use Radio Userland. The program is built on a very powerful database and has the ability to generate and maintain static websites. I use it to manage about a dozen sites, including a couple of large sites with over a thousand pages.
I had set aside about a week to get all of that running, again.
I could not have been further from the truth. Two hours later, and after editing only one line of code for each website (the path to where it would be stored on my hard drive), I can edit and rebuild any of those sites.
As a test, I regenerated JohnDilbeck.com. When I did this on the old system, it would take hours and I always took a nap during the process.
This time, it regenerated thousands of pages in exactly seven minutes!
Now, this means that it created all the pages and images from the database onto the hard drive. I have not uploaded them to my server. In fact, I won' be uploading them until I go through and try to whip that site back into shape after a long period of neglect.
I was planning all of July for rebuilding the site, in addition to all the other things I have scheduled. Now, however, I expect to be able to do it much more quickly, and I like the sound of that.
As a further test, I regenerated all of GeorgiaDragRacing.com, and that process was always very slow. I started the process and went to do some other things. When I came back 17 minutes later, to my surprise, it was done.
One of the strengths of using RU to maintain static sites is its ability to separate page content from design and presentation. I can use as many different templates and CSS files as I want. In the past, I used a different template for each section, but I'm going to try to redesign some of the sites to use only one template.
Either way, I have full control over how I want to present the site, and each page is a separate word processing document in the database that points to the template that should be used during rendering. Not only that, but the page can send data to the template and vice versa. It's a programmers dream system for creating large websites.
You've probably noticed that I don't have a lot of design sense and don't make use of graphics as much as most sites do. That's not a limitation of the program. All of that could be implemented, if I wanted. I just prefer to create sites that are mostly text, that load fast, and are easily indexed by the search engines.
I think I have Radio Userland working as I want, and now I'm looking forward to using it more. Having experienced both, I can assure you that blazing speed is preferable to glacial plodding, as long as the same results are achieved and the flexibility for change is available.
On a Mac OS X system, Radio Userland rocks!
Act on your dream!
JD
8:36:20 PM 
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