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.

Comments on this blog have picked up of late, with the Chinese restaurant entry drawing an impressive 16 reactions at last count.

But what’s really wild is the “things that aren’t here anymore” thread topped 100 comments on Monday. Whoa!

You can find that entry, and others like it, if you click on the “Reminiscin'” button on the right.

Frankly, by this point the “aren’t here anymore” entry is all over the map (literally). Its popularity hasn’t been lost on me, and as you’ve noticed in the weeks since then, I’ve had several daily blog entries on specific nostalgic topics such as Buffums’, with more to come. That’s probably more useful, at least for people who check this blog regularly.

Feel free to continue posting to the “things that aren’t” thread, and if you have ideas for more such nostalgia topics — for instance, places or things you’ve always been curious about — I’ll consider doing entries on them.

And while it may go without saying, I’ll say it anyway: Thanks to everyone who’s posted comments.

… happy Thanksgiving!

Testing, 1, 2 … greetings, and welcome to my blog!

If you’re here, surely you already read my Inland Valley Daily Bulletin columns. (Readers: “Don’t call us Shirley.”) If not, look for those pieces at www.dailybulletin.com/davidallen, where I roam from La Verne to Fontana, Upland to Chino, with lingering stops in Ontario, Pomona and Rancho Cucamonga, looking for silly stuff, quirky stories, culture, charm and character before development drains it all away.

Why do a blog AND three columns a week? Because overkill is underrated. Also, it’s an experiment on my part.

I find more material than I can always get into print in a timely way, I get entertaining comments from readers (especially reminiscences about the recent past) there’s no room for and I notice things around the valley, such as business closures, that I can’t think of much to elaborate on but that ought to be put on the record.

Moreover, I try new restaurants and almost never write about them, and I journey outside the valley to places you might like to read about — for instance, I was at the Rialto Theater in South Pasadena for its closing weekend — but that my column isn’t really set up to chronicle.

Thus, this blog.

My goal is to post daily, so that every time you check in, there will be something new here to read. I can’t promise it will always be scintillating, and it may be just a few lines, but hey, at least it’ll be fresh. Your readership and comments are encouraged and will help this experiment succeed.

Oh, and one more thing: I’ll call you Shirley any darn time I like.