I’m very excited to announce the addition of a new author here at Resto4Life! My guildmate and good friend, Currant — who you may know as the author of Druid Tank — has agreed to transfer his posting efforts here to Resto4Life. I invited him to do so for a couple of reasons:

• An additional Feral perspective should help round out the content here. I’m lucky to have a diverse set of readers, some of which aren’t necessarily Restoration-specced!
• While he’s a fantastic writer, he doesn’t have much experience in design or the technicalities associated with building a blog. By giving him a platform that’s already established, he can worry less about the details (that I greatly enjoy) and focus more on writing the great Feral articles he’s known for.

Naturally, the site will remain mostly Restoration focused, but I hope that you will all make Curry Bearbottoms feel even more warm and fuzzy than his excess body fat and thick coat of fur already make him.

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• Starting Over
• Resto4Life … or at least 2007
• So You Think You Can Blog … You’re Right!

I try to limit my community-based posts to at a maximum of 1 out of 5 posts — no more than one on the front page at a time — but I’ve been working hard on a few exciting changes and wanted to draw everyone’s attention to them (especially you RSS readers that might otherwise miss them). First of all, I’ve added two new sections to my sidebar: Recent Additions and Blogroll Highlights. “Recent Additions” spotlights the five newest additions to my blogroll. “Blogroll Highlights” displays three randomly selected blogs from my blogroll that aren’t currently listed among my “Favorites.”

In addition to these changes, I’ve added OPML files for the Druid blogs on my blogroll, allowing you to download and subscribe to all of the currently updated Druid web sites that I’m aware of. I’ve named this project The World Tree.

Related Posts

• Addon Development through Visual Studio
• Community Watch or “Yet More Blogroll Additions”
• More Work?

I was recently honored to be interviewed for Matticus‘ series of 20 Questions for blog authors. The questions were really amazing and way more tailored than I would have expected, prompting some real introspection. Here’s a sample question and answer:

Q. Aldor Rise needs an escalator: Agree or disagree?
A. I have insta-cast flight form. My favorite thing in the world is to run past someone waiting patiently for the elevator, flip off the edge, pop birdie form, and laugh at the /whisper of “!” NO ESCALATOR!

You can read the full interview here.

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• My 15 Minutes of Fame
• 5 Things Learned … Sorta
• An Interview with Andrige

I ran into a bit of bad luck this weekend. After switching web hosts to A Small Orange and being impressed and excited by their amazing support and the incredible number of backend utilities they offer, I logged in to my new control panel to see that I’d already consumed 12.5% of my monthly bandwidth. In two and a half days. I realized that, at that rate and assuming no large visitor spikes, I would run out of bandwidth with ten days left in the month, leaving me no room to grow. Frantically, I contacted ASO, explaining my dilemma and accepting responsibility for my own mistake of not paying attention to how much bandwidth I’d been consuming at my previous host. They very graciously allowed me to cancel my account and refunded my year’s subscription.

I’ve since completed yet another move (you think I’d be getting better at this) to my new home at Dreamhost, a host recommended to me by Matticus. Their bandwidth (and space) was MUCH more generous and, while I haven’t been as impressed with their backend, it’s still quite functional and far and away better than what was available through my intial web host.

With Resto4Life finally (hopefully) settled, I spent a portion of today revamping some of the site’s layout and graphics. I’ve completely redone the right sidebar, abandoning the collapsing menus that initially attracted me to this theme. This has allowed me to provide greater visibility to the blogs I feature as well as to more prominently display a link to my RSS feed. I’ve also burned a copy of my comments feed for those who would like to be able to keep up with the discussions on various topics. My top menu has been greatly improved and overall, I think the site just feels “friendlier” than it did before. If you happen to be reading this article via an RSS feed, I encourage you to come take a look and let me know what you think!

One other addition worth mentioning is a new page featuring different ways that you can help support Resto4Life: by making a PayPal donation, signing up for Dreamhost webhosting (via a special promotional code that will save you $49), and by spreading the word to your friends and guildmates. I realized when plonking down the yearly hosting cost at Dreamhost that allowing those who were interested in volunteering their help to do so wouldn’t be the same as showering visitors with unwanted advertisements. Or rather, Mr. Phae glaring over my shoulder while I flipped over my credit card to find its CVV2 number made me realize this. Anyway, don’t feel pressured; it’s just there if you feel the inclination. I’m not going to stop blogging by any means (at least not due to webhosting costs)!

Related Posts

• Resto4Life.com Moved … Again
• Some Follow-Up
• Resto4Life, Feral4…Death?

So … many … blogs. Here are some more!

• Kitty McPounceALot
  With what is possible one of the cutest blog names I’ve seen, KMP is written by Whimsy of Perenolde (US) who writes about DPSing, tanking, and her PvP experiences.
• Letters from Birdfall
  Birdfall shares her daily experiences in Azeroth. Fun to read and, possibly best of all, she uses the WoW Model Viewer the same way that I do!
• Lifebloomer
  Sioban of Magtheridon (US) writes about her experiences as a raiding Restoration Druid.
• Lost in the Grind
  Lost in the Grind is written by a Feral Druid, Tabeyus of Sen’jin (US), although the author plays a variety of other games and shares his thoughts on many things MMO-related.
• MoarHPThanJesus
  Named for a well-known quote wherein a forum poster complained that Cat Druids can turn into Bear Form when focus-fired. Includes an awesome online utility for calculating the value of various Feral items!
• One Among Many
  And she does mean MANY! The author of OaM plays a host of characters, both Horde and Alliance, although she professes her main to be a 70 Tauren Hunter.
• Tank Hard
  Written by a collection of authors who play tanks of various flavors (Protection Warriors, Feral Druids, and Protection Paladins), Tank Hard focuses on anything and everything related to keeping the nasties bashing their faces in.
• Wiggi’s World of Druiding
  And Stuff. Written by Wiggishanks of Nazjatar (US), the “stuff” primarily refers to her experiences tanking various raid bosses in Karazhan and Tempest Keep.

Also, I’d like to take this opportunity to point out a few administrative changes to the site (I like bulleted lists):

• New Web Host!
  If you’ve noticed any slowdowns in the site over the past few weeks, it’s because my old web host sold my account to another company who apparently couldn’t get their act together. To give you an idea of how bad the service was, Valenna and I were using the same web host. He received a “welcome” e-mail from the new provider. After hearing nothing from them for two weeks, I put in a support ticket asking where my welcome e-mail was since it contains all of our new account information. I was told that they were sending out these letters in batches and to be patient (er … I think account info is sort of IMPORTANT). That was almost a month ago.
• Blogroll Changes
  I’ve separated the Druid blogs on my Blogroll into Balance, Feral, and Restoration subsections with a couple blogs overlapping more than one category. Hopefully this will help direct visitors interested in more information about a particular aspect of our class.
• Shared Items
  I’ve also added the list of shared items I feature to the Nature’s Grasp section of the Guides page. These are articles from other blog authors I think everyone would benefit from reading. I felt they weren’t visible enough at the bottom of the page but didn’t think I had enough horizontal space in my sidebar to output them there. The guides listed there are likely to fluctuate from time to time, so be sure to check back occassionally (maybe I can find a way to easily highlight the most recently added).
• Ideas and Things
  I’ve created a new category entitled “Dreamstate” that includes all the posts of mine that, while not necessarily intended to be informative, are ideas that I have for the class. Some of these articles are among my favorites, and I didn’t want to see them “lost” 30 pages down into my blog. You can find these listed under the Dreamstate section of the Guides page.

Finally, I’d like to give a great big THANK YOU OMG YOU ROCK SO MUCH THANK YOU THANK YOU to Valenna for the bestest Christmas gift ever: A World of Warcraft Druid shirt from J!NX Clothing:

Want one for yourself? Ladies | Gentlemen

Related Posts

• Blogroll Changes
• Community Spotlight
• More Places to Go Barefoot