Oh, Hi! I’ve Been Expecting You!

Are You Ready Yet?

You’re never ready. Well, we’re here, and I can’t wait to offer you Maximum Customer Experience in a new home. Please make yourself comfy. If you clicked right over and didn’t get to read this post, settle in for a moment. Otherwise, play the music and race forward. There’s a bit of MCE stats at the end for you to giggle over.

maximumcustomerexperience.com

Big sighs, folks. Leaving my old love TypePad. Looking out the window of the moving van, as I move in with a new beau today. I’d like to say I move fast, but this has taken eighty (that’s 8-0) hours so far, spread over several weeks (I work, you know), and there is a LOT of housecleaning yet to do.

Good morning, WordPress, how do you take your coffee?

Me? Au lait, with just a pinch of sugar. Thanks for asking. We’ll get used to each other’s habits soon enough.

And a warning to those of you who will now go looking for trouble—it’s out there. Beta, beta. Updating of images and links within posts (oh, why am I always cross-linking?) will take at least another week to be completed. The first 80 hours were the fun stuff, getting things to look like we’re all used to but perhaps a bit finer, tweak tweak.

I didn’t want to wait another minute to take the Maximum Customer Experience Blog to the next level. Hope you don’t mind, I’m a bit eager.

If you’ve bookmarked posts (you have, haven’t you?) you’ll need to update your links the hard way, by finding the post at my new digs and bookmarking again, because wouldn’t you know it, TypePad won’t allow redirects.

Meaning, for those of you who have smelled fresh air in the last few weeks and haven’t been buried in code?

Meaning that I’ll keep the TypePad blog up and running (comments are now disabled, though) for a month or so to let folks get changed over, then you will get the dread “404 not found” when I stop payin’ the bill. I’m a bit afraid of the Google gods coming down on me for duplicate content during that time, but I want to make this smooth, so I’ll cross my fingers. Yes, feel free to leave comments about how many other horrible things will befall me, but don’t think I don’t already know!

“Feed”ing already?

I *hope* that if you are getting the blog now by RSS, I will be able to transition your subscription to the new blog without your lifting a finger. I’m telling you now if you don’t see Inspiration Points tomorrow (Wednesday Words…), it hasn’t worked, so please subscribe again at the new address (did you miss it?):

http://maximumcustomerexperience.com Might be worth doing for the Easter egg anyway. I think it’s a nice touch.

Mine is the only blog I get by RSS, so by tomorrow I should know if it works, too… if I remember to check… please leave a comment if anything goes pfft for you.

I have an email subscription to my own blog, so again I should know if that works by tomorrow late in the day; if you are in doubt, do re-subscribe and just delete your old one.

SO sorry to make work for my dear readers. I’ve tried to make this as painless as possible.

Hey, Kelly—Our new address?

You bet. Yours, mine, and WP’s. Without you all, well, I wouldn’t have outgrown the old digs, so call it your place to discuss the Maximums and the minimums of Customer Experience. Grow your business, or kvetch about everybody else’s. Put in a good word for the little guys who get it, or fawn over the Big Boys and think about how we can put their lessons to use.

Same MCE, new address. Did you miss that address? http://maximumcustomerexperience.com

Let’s see if we can burn down the new blog with all your fabulous comments and stumbles and diggs. I know you can hardly wait to subscribe to comments, so say Oh Hi yourself before you have to leave! If we get through today and tomorrow okay, I’ll feel much better. I’m a bit terrified right now!

Please, if you notice bugs beyond the horrors of links that come back to TypePad (I’ll get rid of as many as I can of those before you even read this), leave comments. Don’t be shy. If your subscription doesn’t work or if the blog looks really ugly (should look about like the old MCE does, so let’s not count that as really ugly, okay?) like somehow the code is broken… any bugs I do want to know about. Sort of.

Inspiration Points tomorrow. I think I’ll look in my collection for a good one on terror!

Later this week, I’ll tell you about a guest post I wrote for a friend that’s sure to have you commenting at a blog you may never have read before.

Statistics, please?

TypePad was my home for 143 posts, beginning exactly seven months ago today. I’ve been thinking about migrating from TypePad to WordPress since early February. (What can I say, I’m a Capricorn! I had to be sure it was what I wanted, then I jumped!) Note to new bloggers: There’s a lot more to it than ease of setup, which seemed so important to me in November.

If you think taking four months to decide to move is funny, you’ll love this stat: Early in 2007, I wasn’t sure that committing to a blog was for me. I’d been writing posts for half a year before I started the blog, and had a backlog of over 50 at that time. Some never make it (because some are crap!), some do, but my backlog now is even greater. I’d need three of me to edit them all to get them up here.

Over those posts, I’ve had a respectable 686 comments, which is a nice per-post average especially if you consider that not a soul commented on the earliest ones, as most bloggers find. What are you waiting for? That’s where the real gems are hidden!

Good night, TypePad. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have coffee with my new beau. Can I get you a mug?

Thanks, all, for riding along with me.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson