More than five years after its setup (!) and more than seven after my first post on a now-forgotten Blogger blog (!!), it was time to refresh Contrordine Compagni. The media landscape looks very different from the one I ventured in in 2005; in 2013 it is social networks, not blogs, that function as the default terrain for individual expression on the Internet. I, however, stand by my choice. This blog was a very successful investment. It now contains seven years of musings, and this helps me stay aware of my intellectual trajectory and not stray too far; what’s more, it helped many strangers to find me, and some of them are now precious colleagues and even friends. What’s more – and this is critical – I am the one who controls it: the database is my property, and I have the keys to the server. Should Facebook and Twitter decline in the future, just as MySpace did in the Noughties, my content will stay online and easy to find.

The new Contrordine Compagni has three characteristics.

1. A much cleaner and – for the first time – responsive theme (TwentyTwelve). Cleanliness is to highlight content over form; responsiveness is a friendly gesture towards the 20% of my readers that use mobile devices.
2. A new hosting, Host Europe.
3. Most importantly, a new way to manage multiple languages. Most of my posts are both in Italian and English. So far, I managed this with a plugin called Polyglot, which still works but is not maintained anymore. The new system is based on Polylang; it buys me a more usable back end, a cleaner database and a better control on RSS feeds, that are now completely separated. As a result, I now have an English-language-only feed. The solution was found and implemented by sterling-silver hacker Matthias Ansorg. The migration script from Polyglot to Polylang is documented here.

Say hi to the new Contrordine Compagni. If you appreciated these last seven years-plus of blogging, use the Recommend box to give me a +1 or a Facebook like: you’ll help others to find it on search engines. And if you want to know what Contrordine Compagni means, it’s been there all the time. Ready for the next seven years?