Spammers have added this domain name, auntialias.com, to their list domains to originate spam. So the first part of the email address, before the @ sign, is some goofy name, like dillamor or something. They’d send out a whole rash of them, about once a month. How did I know they did it? Because I’d get all the bounced emails, the one that say, “Undeliverable.” A total pain in the butt, those hundreds of bounced emails.

Other times they go through cycles, and create plain old first names, so john and betsy and susan and fred and margaret are the names that go before the @ sign. But I’ve seen that on the recipient end. Mails are sent to me at all those addresses.

In the last day or so, something new has happened. The sender address is my personal email address. No, I didn’t send it. I’d never do that. Who knows how many others have gotten those emails, too. That’s why I’m announcing this on the site. I didn’t do it. I am as much a victim of spammers as you. Moreso in this case: this kind of thing leads to my email address being blacklisted. Not happy. Not happy at all.

mmmm. comments!

Those old page? They’re ancient. Decrepit. Outdated.

They’ve been around here a while. 2007 marks the 10-year anniversary of when I first registered auntialias.com as a domain. (One regret: Back then, I didn’t nab the domain name susan.com. I saw it. It was available. I hesitated. Now, I ask you this: What is easier to spell: susan or auntialias? Uh huh. Thought so.)

So. Where was I? Aaah yes. Ancient pages. Old moldy HTML. I created my first web site in 1995, hosted at AOL. It was the site to go with my first book. Then, a couple years later, in time for another book, I snagged the domain and made a site here. Thanks to the Wayback machine, it’s possible to see the old incarnations. I won’t link directly, as those were days of trust, when one could post an email address on a web site without a kerjillion spammers crawling sites to pick up email addresses to send spam to— and later (may they get their just reward) to spoof my email address as sender. (No, I don’t want to sell you stock recommendations, little blue pills, or anything else.) Back in the day, the world wide wait was all a-tizzy over a book called Making Killer Web Sites, by David Siegel. Earlier incarnations of this site were littered with dozens of little 1-pixel by 1-pixel transparent gifs to force the text into pleasing interlinear space. Content and presentation all together in a big hairy jumble. Before cascading style sheets put text here and presentation (appearance) over there.

I made another set of changes — pulled out all the pixel-gif cruft, cleaned things up a bit. Didn’t get much past that. The cobbler’s children have no shoes, you know.

So now, 10-years on — ta daa! facelift! With WordPress (blog / content management system software) on the back end to make this site as easy to contribute to as my long-running weblog has been for lo these seven years)

AuntiAlias.com is no a Bryce haven, tho I’ve kept all the old stuff, and even 10-year old web addresses will find their new destinations.

Some wrinkles being worked out, but there are good things about this install that work well for the sites we’re creating. Easy to make a Page the site’s Home Page. Pages can be made draft or private, too. Those two things, right there, make upgrading to 2.1 wise.

Downside: changes under the hood made some cool page navigation issues stop working. Fixes from theme authors coming soon. This weekend, they say. I hope so.