You’ve no doubt noticed recent changes here already, implemented in the weeks since we switched to WordPress as our blog provider, but I may as well walk you through a few modest upgrades to our home page, all visible on the right-hand side.

Up top is a search field. You can enter a name and find previous posts about it, if any.

You’ll see a link for my columns on dailybulletin.com, months’ worth. There’s also a link to email me and a link to the newspaper’s home page. I haven’t posted a photo of myself (there used to be one of my sitting on a curb with a 909 on it), thinking a little semi-anonymity might not be a bad thing for my restaurant writeups.

Below that are feeds from my Facebook and Twitter accounts. You can sign up for either page or simply monitor what I’ve posted. A lot of what I post are links to blog posts or columns, which you see already when you’re on my blog, but I do post other things from time to time, especially on Twitter.

Below all that, there’s the blogroll, with links to other sites of interest, mostly local blogs. Below that are category listings for my blog, making a search simpler. Neither of these is new, but they weren’t here when we moved to WordPress and now are back. We’ve eliminated the month-by-month archives, since nobody is likely to search for, say, August 2010 blog posts as a group.

Overall, the blog looks good to me and handles fairly well from my end. The number of comments is down, which is a concern to me, and there are issues with blog posts no longer accepting comments, which I can’t explain but which I hope to address with an expert in our office soon. It’s important to me that all posts accept comments forever.

Any comments, likes or dislikes?

Is there anything more to say than that? Just that I’m thankful for all of you who read my stuff, here and in print, and thankful for these forums that allow me to be paid for writing for a living.

Oh, and there won’t be a Restaurant of the Week post tomorrow. That feature will return next week. You’ll be eating leftovers Friday anyway, right?

This blog is getting back on track. The Category listings returned last week, allowing you to search for local restaurants by city again, look at funny photos and what have you. The search function up at the top works. Still waiting on the Links blogroll, an RSS feed* and a few other bells and whistles, as well as for the “Just another insidesocal Sites site” line to vanish from the top. Be patient; our online overlords have dozens of sites across the L.A. basin to attend to.

For you social media mavens, a button to find my Twitter page is brand new, and you can find a bewildering array of buttons at the end of each post to share it in any of 10 (!) ways, including by good ol’ email.

If you’ve tried leaving a comment, you’ve found we’re now using a system called Disqus. (As in, “discuss.”) You do have to create a password, but that’s as tricky as it gets. No more of the Captcha unreadable-text-in-a-box to transcribe. Disqus evidently keeps out the spammers, at least it has so far, and that’s good news; previously I was deleting a couple of dozen spam comments per day.

Feel free to comment on any of the changes if you like, and if you’re having difficulty here, email me at david (dot) allen (at) inlandnewspapers.com.

* Reader Carl Knecht says that while the old RSS feed is dead, he found the new one: http://www.insidesocal.com/davidallen/feed/

This blog seems to have successfully migrated to its new home on WordPress. Hooray!

What do you think? To my eyes it’s not radically different, but the type is bigger and the layout slightly more open.

Certain elements haven’t transferred yet, the links to other blogs most notably (*and also the categories), but we’ll get that taken care of soon. Let me know if you notice anything else missing or screwy. The crucial thing is that all posts, photos comments are intact.

I’m just beginning to familiarize myself with the inner workings, and since I also have to produce Sunday’s column and sit through training on our glitzy new phone system (lots of technological changes are happening all at once here), I’ll have to forego a Restaurant of the Week. Look for that next week.

Oh, and thanks for bearing with us. I missed this blog the past couple of days and hope you did too.

The commenting function isn’t working yet, as some of you have no doubt discovered. Waiting on somebody in Woodland Hills to figure out what’s wrong. Patience.

* 11:30 a.m. OK, we’re live.

We’re switching to a new blog provider, as are all the other blogs at this newspaper and in this chain, a move that will change the look, presumably for the better, as well as the functionality, ditto one hopes. Our final destination: WordPress. All the past content is supposed to migrate along with the blog. Let’s hope this works as it’s supposed to.

In the meantime, I won’t be able to add any new content for an estimated 48 hours, and I doubt you’ll be able to either. This is due to occur Tuesday and Wednesday. Will it? I’m posting this notice so it’s here as an explanation at whatever time this blog goes dark. I’ll be back as soon as I can.