I’m Back, Baby!

Now then – where were we?

 

Sometimes things happen for a reason – and I think this was one of those things that happen for a reason.  Those of you that know me know I’ve been talking about migrating off of Blogger to WordPress and hosting Lost in America (that’s its real name, you know) privately for a long time.  You’ve followed my trials and tribulations with Windows Live Writer (a great little freeware necessary because of Blogger’s useless imagine manipulation tools).  I’ve even set up a test blog on WP.  But life intervenes, we’re busy, and stuff gets put off.

Well, that’s done with.  Because of things, I’ve been pushed to make the move now.  Fortunately I had a recent backup of the site, and the help of incredibly generous people – most especially Setsuken from Anime Evo and my brother-in-law Doug.  Both have shared their valuable time and expertise in helping me get this transition done, and Setsuken has basically done most of the heavy lifting in customizing the blog itself.  I can’t possibly thank either of them enough.

As for the new site, as you can see we’ve finally leaped into the 21st Century.  There are going to be some hiccups with old posts, broken links, etc., and it’s going to take some time to get all my tags converted to categories.  It’s also going to take some time to get caught up with this last week’s posts.  But I’m excited both about what LiA is now and about what it can now become.  I’m going to play with my new toys and experiment with post formats (because hey – now I can!), and the layout is a work in progress – but I’m thrilled to be here.  By all means feel free to bury me in feedback about what you like and what you love (and even what you don’t).

See you later tonight with the first new article (how better to break in the new site than with Boku Dake ga Inai Machi) and, as ever, my sincere thanks for reading and participating!

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73 comments

  1. m

    Site looks better than ever. Welcome to the world of WordPress, Enzo!

  2. Thanks! Great to be here!

  3. T

    I am loving the new search feature. Nothing says “I’m a trash anime fan” like going back and validating all my opinions on an anime by cross checking them with my favorite reviewers.

  4. K

    Man, I’m going to miss seeing that Hunter x Hunter picture every-time I came on here.

  5. We’ll see – I haven’t customized the template too much yet.

  6. Yay! Good to see you up and running again!

  7. Awesome, excited to keep reading more here for some time to come.

  8. l

    Looking good, baby! Real snazzy.

  9. s

    not bad enzo…not bad…a bit too white tho; needs some contrast but other than that the site is looking crisp

  10. K

    Welcome back! But what about archives, will your bring back old posts as well?

  11. All the posts from prior to 1/12 should be here, even if the formatting is somewhat off. I have about 10 more posts I’ll be porting over today.

  12. I’m quite impressed you managed to migrate everything, that’s a lot of posts and images accumulated over 6 years. So far what I see reminds me of RC, which has elements I both like and dislike, lemme try and summarise a few points:

    -I agree with Sonic that the layout is too white, and having black on top creates a kind of glossy feeling that doesn’t really fit with all the colorful anime pics
    -Not a fan of the horizontal list of posts on top either, its similar to the stuff below while being harder to scroll through i feel
    -I also have to zoom out a bit to get it to look good on my low resolution macbook, otherwise the posts will end up all the way on the left.

    These are all minor issues though, I’m just happy to have the site back.

  13. You’re finally back! The width of the posts are too large for me, but I’m digging the clean white look. Looking forward to your usual posts!

  14. D

    the old site always gave me trouble in firefox so i’m glad this finally happened!

  15. The best thing is how this site doesn’t take lots of time to load. Welcome back and have fun tweaking the site to your liking!

  16. Thanks for the feedback, all. Keep it coming!

  17. Great site, Enzo! I’m glad to see LiA back.

    On another note, did you hear the news that the HxH manga is coming back this year? The information is from a translated comment by Togashi: https://twitter.com/RedMakuzawa/status/690317718004756480

  18. That would be awesome, but I see a lot of conjecture in that assumption. Until something official comes from Shueisha or Togashi himself, I’m not getting worked up.

    Thanks for commenting, and welcome.

  19. I

    So can I finally leave a comment without associating it to an external account? Oh cool, looks like I can. Well, I’m a lurker at heart so it doesn’t change much, but I can at least finally say Hi.

    So…Hello. I’m a longtime follower of your blog (ever since you joined randomc, minus the year I took a sabbatical from following blogs). I’ve always enjoyed your writing, and while we may not see eye to eye on everything (the Fate series most notably), it’s a pleasure reading your posts. Glad to have you back.

  20. Thanks, IB – appreciate you taking the time to comment, and looking forward to life at WP!

  21. Glad to see LiA back online again! New site looks pretty spiffy! 🙂

    Just some hopefully helpful feedback: The white background is very glaring, maybe tone it down a little? The font is also a little thin, so it makes it hard to read sometimes.

    Also, the search bar was hard to find at first. Maybe have it outlined or boxed.

  22. Duly noted, thanks. As I said it’s a work in progress and fine-tuning will definitely be a part of that process.

  23. G

    Congrats on the new site! Definitely looks prettier but a little weird on the mobile site! Maybe it just needs getting used to.

  24. Congratulations! I remember how the old site would start to make my old laptop cry after staying there for a few minutes.
    I like how this is looking.
    I have some feedback about the font. I think that shade of gray does not make good enough contrasts with the background, and it’s a bit hard to read. I would prefer something more like the font I’m seeing on the box where you can write a comment.
    Good luck enzo.

  25. Hi Richard, and thanks. I’m definitely going to tweak stuff like the color schemes and such over the next several days, so thanks for the feedback.

  26. Y

    Welcome back! What’s the URL for the new RSS feed?

    Thanks!!

  27. Hey, Yann! As far as I know with WordPress it should be just https://lostinanime.com/feed/.

  28. Y

    That worked. Thanks!

    Have fun with your new toy 😉

  29. U

    Longtime lurker here, using the occasion to come forward and congratulate you on your awesome new site!

    Looking forward to see more of your stuff!

  30. Thanks – that’s very kind of you!

  31. A

    Glad to see the site back !
    Good that it takes a lot less time to load.
    But I’m really not a fan of the new layout – it just waste far too much space and what is displayed is in general much too big. I prefer when it’s more compact with smaller pictures, where we can get lots of information at a glance.
    I dig to not have to log in to comment, though ^^

  32. L

    Welcome back chief!

  33. R

    Welcome back! With the switch, I’m able to be back, too! For some security issues, your old site booted me out every time I tried to comment — it was so frustrating that I could only read and wasn’t able to “speak up”… By the way, the new site looks a lot more cool and contemporary.

    Seems like Boku Dake ga Inai Machi is your favourite of the season, eh? It’s a great show, but my heart goes to Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu — it’s rare to see an awesome and pure character show these days, and I’m already drawn and sunk deeply in the show every step of the way. Look forward to reading your review on ep 3.

  34. Hard to go wrong with either show, to be honest. Boku Dake is currently in the top spot for me, though.

  35. R

    I can see that…! Yes — both are great, and this Winter season is strong.

  36. So glad you’re finally here on WordPress (same place I am!). I’d like to see you customize the background a little more (the white is a bit bland), but that’s a small concern with your writing finally available again! Congrats on the successful move & looking forward to reading your stuff for a long time to come.

  37. Good stuff Enzo! Congrats!

  38. T

    Great to see the site back,I really enjoy reading your honest reviews!

  39. r

    silent reader for several years here. please change the google search result (Coming Very Soon etc) into I’m Back or the likes. I thought you haven’t back.

  40. s

    I like the look.

  41. Have been lurking for a long time, great look on the new site, I’ve been updating my favorites I had on this site, as the links no longer work and I noticed that the cover pictures on older articles are now extremely low res even though the pictures throughout are still perfect. Someone else probably has already mentioned it, but I haven’t seen it in my quick scan of the comments.
    Good luck with whatever you continue doing in future!

  42. Thanks for de-cloaking. Yes, I’m aware. Well over 1000 broken links as a result of the transition of 6 years of Blogger to WordPress. Going to take time to fix.

    As to the featured images yes, noticed immediately. WP seems to be taking thumbnails from the old posts as featured images rather than full-size. Again, not sure how to fix it except one post at a time.

  43. Great to have you back. When your site was down, I thought I couldn’t connect to it. Remembered that you mentioned some time ago that you wanted to migrate the blog to another host and your announcement clarified that fact. The new layout looks clean and better and some time to get used to. The old one was memorable because that was how I’ve always read your entries. All the best in trying out your experiments here.

    P.S Will you do write-ups on some TV series? I noticed that you didn’t cover series 9 of Doctor Who like you did last time.

  44. Thanks, Dunn. I plan to cover Game of Thrones. The deal with Doctor Who was, to be honest, I was just so sick of Clara I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for the show anymore – it wasn’t the Doctor Who I knew. Now I may give it another shot.

  45. h

    New site is looking great! Welcome back 🙂

  46. Thanks, much appreciated!

  47. S

    I thought for a second that something’s happened and the site’s gone completely, then I saw the announcement.
    Now I’m really happy to see that you’re back.
    Looking forward to reading your reviews from now on, as it used to be.

  48. s

    Welcome back, Enzo.
    I have followed your blog for a long time, decided it was finally time to start commenting now that the new site is up! I really enjoy reading your reviews and thanks to you I watched some animes that I would have otherwise overlooked(Yowamushi Pedal, Ping pong, Ore Monogatari!, to name a few).

  49. Wow, thanks for than Saiko – and s always, thanks for de-cloaking and joining the conversation. Sounds like you enjoy sports manga – have you also seen Ginga e Kickoff?

  50. s

    Yeah, I really love sports manga/anime since most of them focus on characters and character development. I haven’t seen Ginga e Kickoff, but I’ll probably watch a few episodes and see if I like it .A good sports manga I started reading recently and definitely recommend is Ballroom e Youkoso.

  51. J

    Enzo, there are lots of wasted white space on the web version. It would be great, if the text/design would be more compact.

  52. l

    congrats.

    wordpress is easy fodder for hackers though, be sure to keep it up-to-date, be mindful of plugins, ensure directory permissions are properly restricted, and set a strong, random password for admin.

  53. Haven’t been around for awhile and the place looks better than ever. Keep it up Enzo!

  54. Welcome back Enzo, missed your site for a while and your reviews, looks amazing! One word though, everything is sooooo big- but then I realized maybe I was zoomed in too much :p

    all the best, can’t wait to see ur beautiful reviews 🙂 M

  55. Welcome back.
    Long live to LiA!

  56. Thanks!

  57. C

    I knew something was brewing! I got a little worried that my feedly doesn’t load any new posts from your site. It took me ages to finally visit your site directly and find out why–And wow, the site looks pretty! I have a lot of catching up to do…
    I do have a dilemma though, would you know how I can have your updates back in feedly once again? Or this isn’t supported/allowed anymore?
    Thanks in advance & more power!

  58. Let me check on that and get back to you…

  59. Have you tried the following:

    If you have the feeds’ URL ( ending in .xml as opposed to site’s URL)

    Here are 3 ways to find and add the feed:

    Just paste the feed’s URL in feedly’s search box. We should then find the exact feed you are looking for.
    Add the feed’s URL right after http://feedly.com/i/subscription/feed/
    Type the feed’s URL in your browser you should see “Follow to this feed using feedly” and a “Follow now” button. Clicking this will open the feed in feedly.

    If the previous methods didn’t work

    Then you will have to find the site’s feed.

    You can look for the RSS button on the site’s page. Copy paste this .xml URL in feedly search (see above).
    Pro tip: try adding /feed, /feeds or /rss at the end of the site’s URL. That will either return a 404 page (fail) or the feed itself (success!). Once you have found the feed’s URL (and see above).

  60. C

    Thank you so much!! Your advice worked 🙂

  61. S

    You might be aware of this, but if you are looking for things to improve: # of comments on the article would be nice to see while browsing

  62. Yes, that’s definitely a priority change.

  63. L

    Congratulations on your new site! I have a problem though with the feed though since my app won’t update it cause it “doesn’t conform to rss or atom standard” or something. I’m not an expert on this stuff though so I’m not sure what’s wrong or maybe I need to find a new app?

  64. Which app are you using?

  65. L

    gReader in android, although i mostly use my unpopular windowsphone since it works much better than android, RIP 🙁

  66. L

    the phone I mean 🙂

  67. Hey, this site is looking very very nice : ) I don’t stop too often these days, but I’m glad to see this place looking so pretty (even if it doesn’t have an HxH watercolorish banner on top).

  68. Long time reader here too. I don’t think I’ll be commenting too often (if at all), so I’ll just say that I enjoy a lot reading your posts even if I don’t agree with everything you write, and also a big thanks for helping me discover several hidden gems, like Hikaru no Go, Seirei no Moribito, Nodame Cantabile or my favorite anime, Cross Game.

  69. Hey there, thanks very much for checking in. Always happy to hear from someone who found a new series based on something I wrote!

  70. Dig the new look and welcome back! Glad to see the old content migrating over too since I get behind and like to go back and read your posts, even if they are for series from a few seasons back 🙂

  71. Thanks – it’s great to be here on WordPress, even if some of the old content hasn’t transferred over perfectly.

  72. OMGEEEE!!!!! it looks soooo goood!!! I hadn’t been on her in awhile and to see this was a nice surprise. My exact words when the page came up was woah this is niiiiiiiccccceee!! :). And i was only supposed to take a 15 min break from work ah well. *Starts exploring new site*.

  73. Music to my ears! Thanks for letting me know.

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