Mary Beth's New Website

Hi, this is Len.  I wanted to explain just a little bit about Mary Beth’s new website.

First, the basics: it’s pretty much the same as it was before.  Everything is at the same address, so your bookmarks will still work.  Mary Beth will still send notices whenever she posts something new, and you’ll still be able to click right from her email to the post on this website.

So, what happened to this site? Well, the website upgraded from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10.  That sounds like a prescription drug, I know, but it’s actually the Content Management System that helps run the website.  A Content Management System (CMS) is not a program (the program is actually PHP), but a way of organizing words and pictures for the Internet. Other CMS’s are WordPress and Joomla; there are also some that are made for special platforms (FourSquare and GoDaddy). It means that as long as you follow a certain set of rules and procedures, you can run a Drupal site from nearly any web host.

Drupal was developed in 2000 by two University of Antwerp students, Dries Buytaert and Hans Snijder.  Since then, volunteers have built on the original idea making it better and adding security features to protect it from hackers. 

Mary Beth’s original website was built about ten years ago in Drupal 7, the seventh version.  Since then, it’s only been hacked a few times, but it was still working after over 250 posts. Drupal 7 is obsolete now, and the security features will no longer be updated.  That means that it’ll only be a matter of time before the site gets hacked and might pose a security risk to users (like you) when you visit.  So, we needed to update it.

It is possible to update a website from one version to another automatically, but, unfortunately, I made some special modifications to Mary Beth’s site when I first launched it ten years ago.  So, it’s been a struggle to get it working in the new version of Drupal (Drupal 10). That finally happened.

For all the hassle on our end, the benefits for you are pretty good.  Mary Beth’s website should load faster and look better even for folks outside of the US (I’m looking at you, Denmark and Germany!).  It should also look better on desktops, tablets and smartphones because the pictures and type will change size automatically.

When you come to the site from Mary Beth’s email, you should be able read her latest post right away. If you missed something, the last few posts will be visible on the side.  There is also a Tag Cloud, that lets you quickly find a post by clicking on any of the keywords from the last several posts.  You can also use the Search Bar at the top of the page to search all of Mary Beth’s writing by entering a word or phrase that was in the post. Finally, there is a new section on the side that has just a few of readers’ Favorite Posts – check it out in case you’ve missed one of the good ones!

As always, Mary Beth loves it when you leave a comment.  It’s the best way to share your ideas with Mary Beth as well as all of her readers. The comment form at the end of every post works the same as always.  Click the checkbox to prove you’re not a robot – Mary Beth will also check and approve the comment which means you won’t see your words posted right away, but have faith!  They will get there.

Plus there’s another new feature for those of you who are woke enough to be on Social Media.  If you have an Instagram or Facebook account, you can click the icon at the end of each post and share it with your friends. This is a good way to help Mary Beth grow her readers (we want that!), so we’d appreciate it if you’d share her posts whenever you really like something she’s written.

Just a few more things: If you’re having a hard time reading the type, the new website is fully compatible with the zoom feature on your browser.  This works on Chrome and Edge (and probably Safari, too). On your desktop, look for three small dots at the top right of the screen.  Click on them, then look about halfway down the list for “ZOOM.” You can make the text larger or smaller to make it easier to read. 

As you know, Mary Beth previously moved most of her longer stories from this website to Substack, which is better for fiction.  It is free, and you can get to those stories HERE.

Finally, we have put a lot of Mary Beth’s past posts on the new site, and we’re in the process of adding more.  If there is something you remember, but can’t find, please let us know.  We’ll do our best to get it up.