I broke out the BFH last night and spent the better part of quite some time pounding on the DogSite v2.0 (that would be this site), straightening out dents in this and kinks in that while swearing into a frequently empty wineglass.

So now we have three DogSites up and running, more or less:

1. The original: www.maddogmedia.com
2. V2.0: http://www.maddogmedia.com/wordpress
3. V3.0: www.maddogmedia.wordpress.com

I thought for sure that v3.0 was going to be the way to go, mostly for cost (none) and ease of use (plenty). And then I took a sharper glance around under the hood. Only 3MB of storage, which limits photo uploads, and no video or audio uploads at all without “upgrading.” Sheeyit. I already have a paid site — the original, hosted by Hostcentric — and I can chuck my little digital stones into that vast pond for years before I fill it up. And with WordPress installed there, I can do what you see here.

The downside is, running your own WordPress show requires you to get a little more hands-on behind the scenes. Mama WordPress ain’t there to hold your hand and walk you through kindergarten on things like RSS feeds, header images and other tweaks and sneaks. Hence the wine and swearing.

This morning I think things look more or less OK. Of course, it’s early yet.

It appears the free version of WordPress may not work for me (and thee). I can see I’d exceed the upload limitations by, oh, say, Thursday. So we’re back to knocking down walls and laying pipe here at Mad Dog Media.

I like taking a pic now and then, and you never know when I might resume raving into a mic’ or a camera, and seems you just can’t do much of that sort of thing for free. Not at WordPress, anyway. Who knew? I’ll have to have a word with my man Al Gore about this outrage next time we hook up backstage at “SNL” to do belly shots of Chamucos off Tina Fey.

Thanks for the emails and comments on the latest iteration of the DogSite. Many of you have asked to be able to add a quick comment rather than crank out an email; others have been asking for RSS feeds. Some just want to be able to target an individual post and forward it to someone in hopes of causing a stroke. This WordPress template lets me grant all those wishes.

There are a few things I still don’t like about handing the site over to a template. The biggest is not having a backup copy of whatever I post stashed here on the old hard drive. My buddy Hal at Hardscrabble Times writes all his posts in AppleWorks before sending them into the ether, and maybe I’ll follow his lead using TextEdit, which is a nice, clean little word processor. In the one cut-and-paste I did from The Daily Dog v1.0, I noticed that the post retained the formatting of the original instead of assuming the qualities of this new, bigger-and-better digital world. Lots to learn, lots to learn. And me so long in the tooth, too.

HERE WE GO AGAIN — one more crack at using prefab, off-the-rack blogging software to do all the heavy lifting at Mad Dog Media’s digital domain.

I recently learned that Hostcentric allows clients to install WordPress software for free, and once I figured out how to do that without croaking the years of wisdom I’ve uploaded to their servers, I pulled the trigger, picked a template and started dicking around.

There are positive and negative aspects. On the up side, playing with a new toy got me thinking about redesigning the flag, and I think I came up with a good one. You can weigh in on that design in comments, which the old paint-by-numbers site lacks, and subscribe via RSS feed, another upgrade from the previous edition.

The downside is, I’m an old dog trying to learn new tricks. And surprisingly, WordPress doesn’t have a ton of interesting, versatile templates from which to choose. But I kinda like this one, and I’ll be curious to see what you folks think of it. Holler in comments at your convenience.

If I decide to go the WordPress route, whose main advantage is simplicity and mobility, I’ll keep the old site archived somewhere. Seven years worth of foam-flecked jabbering must be preserved, if only for the prosecutors.