Some more changes

I know it has been a while since I've posted anything meaningful, but I've been incredibly busy focusing on my MA and all the work that goes along with that. The past couple of days I've made a few important changes to History Rhymes which were sorely needed. First of all, I made several changes to the backend of History Rhymes which should keep the site functioning more smoothly. Other than that, you won't notice any actual differences. The second thing I've done is to update post categories. I've added a few new categories and subcategories to ensure that posts of interest can be found more easily and efficiently. A couple of other changes include adding a Twitter feed for my history Twitter account (@HistoryAlex) and at long last fixing the Archives page which has been broken for some time.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am going to be focusing on German history for my MA dissertation. That means I will be writing more articles about German history on here. Since my last post I have narrowed down my topic considerably. I will be researching the relationships between the Bavarian aristocracy and the monarchy in the 19th century. In lieu of that I will be creating a new multi-part series which will be related to that. I will post an official introduction rather soon.

Some changes

Things have been extremely hectic as of late and unfortunately, I really haven't had any time to post anything on History Rhymes. Graduate school is far more work-intensive than undergraduate school is and so my days have been crammed full of work. More articles will be coming soon though, that I promise.

A couple of changes have also occurred in the past couple of months. First of all, the direction I am taking for my MA has changed significantly based on some research I've done, rendering The Old Journal (the new blog I started -- see the last post before this one) practically useless. I've decided to shut it down and just remain focused on this blog. Today I posted all articles from The Old Journal onto History Rhymes. They are all backdated to the original time I posted them. Secondly, my research has led me more into German history than American or British history.

Justizpalast in Munich as shown on a 19th century postcard
Source: Wikipedia

I will be focusing primarily on the history of the German aristocracy in the 19th century. This is quite a radical change in plan, but by research interests have pointed me in that direction. For this blog, I've already done a series on Nineteenth Century German History and this, in a way, is an extension of that.

I've setup another blog specifically to record my findings and research as it happens. It's called Das alte Tagebuch ('The Old Journal' in German). Despite the German title, the blog will be in English. I decided to do that as opposed to clogging up History Rhymes with random bits of research. For History Rhymes, I've always tried to have more polished articles based on proper research, not just ramblings, musings and snippets of thought which is what I am going to be using Das alte Tagebuch for as my research progresses.

Temporary Outage (Spambots)

I apologize for the temporary outage. I've been getting hit pretty hard with spambots and my hosting service shut down service to my account. I think I've got it taken care of after doing some careful research about redirecting traffic coming from spambots so that they don't hit the server anywhere near as hard. If you have any difficulties with the site, please let me know as soon as possible by sending me an email.

Update: The site was down again for a while because apparently the actions I took against the spambots weren't quite enough. I researched again some more and am trying something else now. Again, don't hesitate to contact me if you have issues. Also, if you have suggestions for fighting off spambots, please let me know by either sending me an e-mail or leaving a comment here!

Thank you for your patience!

-- Alex

New ‘Featured’ Page

Just as a quick announcement, I've spent quite a bit of time today getting History Rhymes back up and running at full capacity after switching themes. The new theme broke some of my old pages, specifically the Archives and Links pages, but now those problems are resolved and they've both been slightly redesigned.

Aside from fixed problems, I've also added a new header image with the blog name and a cowboy hat. The other new item I've added today is a new featured article page. This page contains the posts that I think are the most informative and best written. If you hover over the 'Featured' button on the menu above, you'll see that it also lists the multi-part series I've done. This new page is a great place to start reading this blog if you are unsure, overwhelmed or just want the good stuff.

You can check out the featured page here: http://www.historyrhymes.info/featured.