Production Hell: GoDaddy's Blogging Features (Or Lack Thereof) Delay FromPyrgos.com Rollout Date

My goal was to have my “.com” ready by January 2026.

That’s not happening.

Technically, the site is already live. If you want to visit today and read reviews, you can. But most of the content isn’t ready for prime time, and the official rollout is now pushed well into next year. Realistically, I don’t expect the site to be fully finished until summer 2026 at the earliest.

The reason is simple: GoDaddy’s blogging tools are bad. I knew they weren’t great when I signed up, but I didn’t realize just how bad until I was deep into the process. Coding a blog post correctly takes far more time than it should, especially when it comes to making everything work on mobile. And mobile is the real problem.

By default, the site places post categories at the top of the page. On mobile, clicking a category doesn’t take you to the content you selected. It just highlights the category, and you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to see that anything even happened. It’s unintuitive and frustrating.

To work around this, I created an archive that organizes content by alphabetical range. That’s been a lot of work, since each post has to be manually re-categorized. And I haven’t even finished transferring all the content yet. I also built a “reviews by brand” section, with separate pages for each brand, so readers aren’t forced to hunt for content after clicking on it. Again, more work.

The upside is that GoDaddy allows for a cleaner, more professional-looking layout than anything Blogger offers. Visually, it’s a big step up.

You might be asking, “Bryan, if you knew it was this bad, why did you go with GoDaddy?” The answer is that my plan is long-term and two-tiered. I want From Pyrgos to continue for many years as a blog. But eventually, I also want to use the same site to sell my own fragrances. That’s where GoDaddy shines. Its retail tools are strong, and launching a store there will be much easier than on most other platforms. What I lose in blogging convenience, I gain in future marketing and sales potential. Having my own fragrance brand accessible to the public could help fund the blog itself.

So stay tuned. As work continues on FromPyrgos.com, I’ll keep publishing here on Blogger. When the new site is fully ready, this address will be retired, and visitors will be redirected to the new home. Until then, you can keep enjoying my content here.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Versace Versense (Versace)

Released in 2009, Versace’s feminine-marketed unisex Versense feels like a 1990s throwback that arrived a decade too late. I say this because Versense is a figgy floral that could easily be mistaken for any one of the dozens that perfumed the air in 1998 or 1999. Its appearance on shelves when it did is something of a curiosity, and I’m not convinced the category needed another entry.

It opens well enough, with a bitter, pithy bergamot and lime accord that smells reasonably natural and avoids the waxy citrus aldehydes that tend to push feminine fragrances toward drugstore territory. Many reviewers on Fragrantica wax poetic about the citrus, but I’m less persuaded. Yes, it smells good, but it's thin and somewhat weak. To my nose, it lacks dimension. From there, a lemongrass accord emerges, again faint and difficult to clearly discern. Eventually, vague white floral notes appear, lending a soft green sweetness. This is where the fragrance veers into unisex territory, as the notes that might've sent it firmly into the ladies department are incredibly restrained. And then comes the fig.

It’s a fig accord with discreet vetiver and oakmoss, or something standing in for it, and it’s here that Versense performs best. Fig is an agreeable, nostalgic note. Versace presents it plainly, without complicating the structure, a restraint appreciated. Still, Versense wears like an Italian-style eau de cologne built from mid-grade materials, where one might wish for refinement. Ennui in green, if you will. 

Fougères Marine (Montale)

The box arrives in marine blue, the bottle in Montale’s signature silver, but that’s the last you’ll hear from me about “presentation.” What matters is the scent, and online the chorus is deafening: Fougères Marine smells “just like Tommy,” only richer, smoother, longer lasting, and therefore—according to the internet’s most excitable NPCs—worthy of immediate purchase. I understand the impulse. I smell it too. Yet I can’t quite join the chant, because I was there. I wore Lauder’s vintage Tommy when the nineties were still happening, not yet a nostalgia industry. I loved that fragrance. And this is not that fragrance.

This is the brief for that fragrance—a parallel-world scenario in which Tommy Hilfiger’s team bypassed Lauder entirely and instead tried to slip Olivier Creed a suitcase of Euros to work his unofficial “Creed magic.” In this imaginary scenario, Olivier remembers he isn’t a perfumer and dutifully outsources the job to an S-tier ghost: someone with the skill and precision to construct Tommy’s bone structure using top-flight materials, and lace its freshness with dusky herbal aromatics, Calone 1951, and a massive synthetic ambergris accord (Cetalox, Precyclemone B) for that "marine" piece. The result behaves like the finest Creeds once did: rich yet airy, diffusive yet tingling in cold air, gliding forward with the self-assurance of a fragrance that lasts twenty hours on skin and nearly forever on fabric.

Wearing it, I’m reminded that formulas age even when nostalgia doesn’t. Today’s Tommy cologne still resembles its former self, though a juniper-seaside inflection has crept in, muting the gauzy sweetness of its youth with a hint of lavandin-fueled marine bitterness, as if quietly borrowing a page from Montale’s book. If you must compare Fougères Marine to Tommy, compare it to this reformulated Tommy, not the original one worn with striped crewnecks and Caesar cuts in 1995. Montale’s version is too complex, too polished, too gleamingly synthetic-ambergris aquatic to truly resurrect the spiced-apple style of the nineties, a genre unlikely ever to return.

What it does revive, however, is a rarer pleasure: the sense that a fragrance can be both supremely wearable and quietly spectacular. Tommy was always a good idea, but Montale perfected it. To quote the NPCS: "S-Tier." Even my fiancée likes this one, and she doesn't like anything.

A Drop d'Issey Essentielle Eau de Parfum (Issey Miyake)

I've not smelled the original Drop from 2021, although it looks like it'd be right up my alley—lilac, powdery notes, fresh musks? What's not to like?

The only reason I own the Essentielle flanker is an eBay seller offered a deal I couldn't refuse on a 100 ml bottle, so there you have it. All three of Miyake's Drops feature a prominent lilac note, my favorite floral in nature and perfume, so I figured I couldn't go wrong with any of them. Essentielle is beautiful and ethereal, with a lovely lilting lilac accord that permeates the entire structure, but I'm struck by one undeniable reality: it smells a helluva lot like the original Tommy Girl (Calice Becker, 1996).

It's like the perfumer took an unused Tommy Girl mod, swapped lilac in for green tea, and amped up the synthetic green magnolia accord. Smells great, albeit softer and a little better quality than its nineties progenitor.

Very Saturday-at-the-mall casual, but good stuff!

Old Spice "Long Lasting" Cologne (Shulton, 1980 - 1990 Vintage)

The 1980s ushered in my favorite period for Old Spice, perhaps from personal nostalgia. This was the decade when American Cyanamid opted to repurpose the brand image and moved the red logo lettering above the blue ship graphic. They slapped a blue and gold band around the box lettering and called it "Long Lasting Cologne" to drive the longevity and "powerhouse" inference home. This version of Old Spice saw a bit more cola-like brightness in the opening accord, and longevity is indeed pretty impressive, clocking in at no less than ten hours. Beautiful stuff.

Aside from that, there isn't a whole lot else to say about it. If you're familiar with the scent of Old Spice, here it is, yet again. My own view is perhaps unpopular, but I think the lettering above the ship looks sharper than prior iterations of these graphics. The visual balance is better. I also enjoy that Shulton kept the traditional red box with the larger ship graphic, and I even like that they put "long lasting" in front of "cologne" to make an unnecessary point about the cologne concentration, which is really an eau de toilette concentration. This stuff is strong. Old Spice is strong in general. Whoever it was that said it's "fleeting" clearly didn't know what he was talking about, because this fragrance is anything but. In vintage form it is practically eau de parfum strength. 

I believe this will be the last vintage era of the scent that I review, not because I've tired of it, but rather for lack of access to any other vintages. I've given you early 1950s through to the present. I've yet to see 1940s Old Spice on eBay or elsewhere. I imagine someone like Bill Gates or Elon Musk has a full bottle of it with zinc stopper #1 resting comfortably atop the Hull Pottery Company's bottle, but doubt that I'll ever have a chance to own one myself. Hope springs eternal, and I still keep an eye out. It's important to remember that these first issue bottles weren't made very well, and leakage was a big problem, which makes the likelihood of ever finding one that much slimmer. 

To sum it all up, Old Spice hasn't changed very much in its 87 years of existence. I slapped on the current (c. 2019) formula yesterday, and marveled at how similar to the vintages it smelled. The biggest difference occurred in the late 1960s, when the archival Shulton formula was forced to change due to increasing restrictions on nitro musks. The 1950s version smells much woodier, muskier, and sweeter than anything from the 1970s onward. I found the 1970s formula to be a touch muskier and more powdery. 

The 1980s formula has less musk but what feels to me like an extra dash of cinnamon and nutmeg. The 1990s P&G formula streamlines the scent's facets, and that version carries on virtually unchanged to the present, although I have yet to try 2020s Old Spice, so perhaps that will be a future review. 

Old Spice Cologne "Original" (Procter & Gamble, 1993 — 2008 Vintage)

In 1990, Procter & Gamble acquired Old Spice to the tune of $300 million, and immediately made changes to its products. At first, they seemed undecided on which changes they wanted to make—things like the stopper color, the exact contours of the new racing yacht insignia, the moniker of "original" versus "classic"—but they eventually settled on a look that wasn't drastically different from what Shulton had been using for 53 years. After 1992, the stopper went from white back to grey, and the milk glass bottles remained in production. Old Spice was still very much Old Spice. 

With that said, I notice some key changes which clearly signal P&G's efforts to downgrade the product. First, the bottles. Shulton's bottles were creamy glass that was of the creamy color; P&G's are clear glass that are given a somewhat shoddy coating of creamy finish on the outer layer. There are vertical streaks visible on the neck of my 1993 bottle, pictured above, evidence that the finish didn't dry as evenly as it should have. Of course, this isn't really a big deal, per say, as glass is glass, and fragrance is always better in glass than plastic. But that little cost-cutting thing is noticeable, which is a shame. 

Second, the fragrance is given an industry designator: "Original." Lest you be confused by the myriad other Old Spice fragrances crowding the shelves, P&G felt it necessary to announce that they were making the "original" fragrance by printing "original" everywhere. Why they felt this was necessary is anyone's guess, but mine is that they wanted to assure customers that the new ownership hadn't changed anything. I find this type of marketing to reek of insecurity, and wonder what the conversations were like in closed-door meetings. "Hey, we really need to lean into the idea that what we're selling is the real deal." "Yes, you're right, but how do we do that after we've changed the graphic on the bottle?" "I got it! Let's call it 'Original' and print that word everywhere. Shulton never felt the need to do that, and nobody questioned their products, so we should totally change the packaging in this obvious way!" 

Lastly, P&G reformulated Old Spice into something very close to what is in bottles today. The early nineties formula is nearly identical to the current formula, except it's a touch spicier on top and a slight bit louder in concentration, projecting further and for an hour or two longer. The citrus and kitchen spice opening accord has a bit of fizzy texture that the current stuff simply lacks (although when atomized, the current formula is pretty darn close). Nineties Old Spice is the progenitor to the plastic bottle stuff on shelves today, and for better or worse, it smells 90% similar to what you're buying in 2025. This is P&G's take on the fragrance, where the vanilla is scaled back, the carnation and clovey spices are butched up, and the powder kicks in early. It's good, and it's recognizably Old Spice, but it's markedly different from the musky vanilla of the 1950s and '60s. Old Spice lost a lot of its sweetness, and gained a more pronounced floral facade. 

Like Brut, Old Spice has been through countless variations and reformulations over the decades, so it's difficult to say when the packaging shown here changed to something else. I know the racing yacht eventually got more colorful, and on the box it got even bolder than what's on my 1993 box. And of course, there are vintages of the plastic bottle, starting with the "sideways text" version and ending with the fugly patch graphic. 

I'm sure there's some Old Spice fanatic out there somewhere who will find this article and write me with something like, "How can you spew such ignominious garble?" My answer: I'm pretty good at it, actually. 

I Have "Excess" XS

One Scent; Three Versions

I've had a bottle of French-manufacture Paco Rabanne XS, considered "vintage" at this point, for many years now, and am finally down to the last ten milliliters or so. This prompted me to seek out a new bottle, but I'm painfully aware that XS has been reformulated and reissued over the years, and it took a bit of reading to discern which version I needed.

There seems to be three iterations of XS: the original, made in France, with a straw-colored liquid. Then there's a 2018 reissue in squat, heavy glass (very heavy) with purplish-grey liquid. But there's also an interim formula, released sometime in the 2000s and in the same bottle as the original, but with a light grey liquid. I decided to buy the 2018 reissue, based on reviews. Off to eBay I went.

Foreverlux had a listing for the 2018 version, so I ordered it. Unfortunately, Foreverlux goofed, and sent me the interim formula. I say "unfortunately" because this version is reputedly not as good as the 2018 version, with many complaining it's too weak and has off notes. Without sweating it, I returned to eBay and re-ordered the fragrance, and this time received the correct one, pictured above in the center. 

How do these compare? The original is the guidepost, of course. XS from 1993 is a crisp aromatic fougère in the Platinum Égoïste style of metallic geranium over mint, juniper berry, coriander, lavender, oakmoss, cedar, and sandalwood. XS is so close to the Chanel that I'm convinced they're mods of each other that simply found different brands for release. 

The interim version in the tall bottle (pictured to the right) smells very similar, but isn't as plush or round. There's a bit of screechy citrus in the opening accord that isn't in the original, and the heart is thinner, sharper, and more watery. Still smells like XS, still quite good, but the gunpowdery heart isn't as convincing, and it's a bit weaker. This is disappointing because this version came on the heels of the original, and shouldn't be so weak.

The 2018 version is also notably weaker than the original, but here the rough edges of its predecessor are polished and improved significantly. The aromatics enjoy better balance, the freshness feels more immediate and rounded, and the drydown is simply a weaker version of the original. I think it's a shame that they tinkered with it, but at least it smells right. If you're after this fragrance, go for the 2018 version.

The thing to remember with XS is that it was released in the 1990s, which was the decade for stylistic departures from what men used to wear. This type of metallic-fresh fragrance, exemplified by XS, PE, and Silver Mountain Water, was intended to say, "This isn't your dad's Old Spice." Forget the powdery cotton ball colognes of yesteryear. The nineties man smelled sharp and clean, like detergent soap on steroids. 

My Brief Thoughts on Club de Nuit Bling

So Armaf has a new one dropping right now, and the internet is buzzing.

Weirdly, the brand has opted to shroud the fragrance’s pyramid in mystery, listing only a few notes and fantasy accords: “stardust,” “velvet woods,” “flower prism.” Supposedly there’s some citrus and vanilla in the mix as well. The Fragrantica write-up by Sandra Raičević Petrović hints at green notes like geranium and lavender, but her information appears to be secondhand.

My first thought was, maybe this is a Green Valley clone. I have this fantasy that Armaf will finally cut the crap and craft a worthy copy of Creed’s fabled 1999 masterpiece, but the two percent of me that dares to hope is violently oppressed by the ninety-eight percent that knows it’ll never happen. Green Valley is the ultimate modern green scent, and it would be pure genius if Armaf cloned it. Unfortunately, they’ve long abandoned the Y2K, late-nineties throwback vibe in favor of milking the post-Aventus cash cow, endlessly cloning Bourdon’s pineapple formula. I own one of Armaf’s better-known Aventus clones, and while I admire it and wear it now and then, I still think Aventus—and anything that smells like Club de Nuit Intense Man—just isn’t my thing.

What’s annoying about the Bling rollout is how people online are pulling random theories out of thin air. For some reason, a bunch of guys on Fragrantica and Reddit are convinced Bling is a clone of Chanel’s Allure Homme Edition Blanche. “It’s got citrus, vanilla, and woods, so it must be Allure Homme Blanche.” To which I say—what? Why? Where did that even come from? Because it has citrus, vanilla, and “velvet woods,” that automatically narrows it down to an Allure Homme flanker? There are no Armaf clones of Allure Homme or its flankers, for that matter. Honestly, none of this makes sense. If you haven’t smelled the fragrance, nobody’s telling you the real notes, and bottles aren’t even in circulation yet, how do you just declare it a clone of something? Where did that comparison even start?

This is a wait-and-see situation. There are maybe two or three guys online who have smelled it and posted ridiculously brief “first impression” reviews on YouTube, almost as if they’ve signed NDAs. They all suggest it smells like Club de Nuit Intense Man with a big mango accord and a pinch of herbal aromatics layered over the usual smoky pineapple, bergamot, and ashy woods. If that’s true—and that’s a big if—then Club de Nuit Bling isn’t worth the wait. I’m still sitting quietly in the background with my fingers crossed that, against all odds, Bling turns out to be a creamy-green nineties golf fragrance disguised as metrosexual fluff.

Hope springs eternal.

Côte d'Azur (Féraud)

Released in 1988, Côte d'Azur by Avon/Féraud smells of salt and peaches (interesting combo) in the top accord, which rapidly resolves into a tuberose and muguet heart, with that salty essence lingering in the periphery well into the base. 

I agree with Derek (Varanis Ridari) that this smells like it could easily be the feminine version of Mario Valentino's Ocean Rain (1990), which was Edmond Roudnitska's final farewell. Valentino's scent is a very Roudnitska-esque arrangement of overripe, banana-like fruits, salty brine, and dry sandy tones over a pared-down chypre base. Féraud's is simpler on top (not quite as avant-garde) and smells perhaps 60% similar, but winds up in a different neighborhood at the ten minutes mark: Creed's Fleurissimo.

I'm talking vintage Fleurissimo, 2005 and older. For the rest of its considerable duration, Côte d'Azur is a dead-ringer for the Creed, and nearly the same quality. The biggest difference is the lack of real ambergris, which is abundant in the vintage formula of this particular Creed, but that salinated accord isn't half-bad. If you remember Fleurissimo as it was pre-Kering (and pre-Aventus) but can't swing the cost of a vintage bottle on eBay, try Avon's ghostwritten late eighties Féraud. Heck, it might've been done by the same perfumer. Who knows?

From Pyrgos Using "GoDaddy Airo" and an Explanation of Benefits

This is the "soft opening" of my blog relocation: frompyrgos.com (link here)

Not all of the content has been uploaded yet. Still working through 13 years of posts and gradually transferring them over in alphabetical order. So bear with me, and if the attenuated amount of content bothers your OCD or something, I won't take it personally if you'd rather wait until 2026 to stop back. 

Someone asked me recently why I chose GoDaddy Airo as my hosting service, and told me there were better options. No argument there -- for blogging, there are far better options. It might seem like a strange choice, and it is, in some ways. GoDaddy's blog hosting is clumsy at best. The options for how to set up and organize content and a "blogroll" are severely limited. The best option was to do the scattered menu approach of just having brands alphabetically listed out, with "All Posts" at the top for those who are just looking to read the latest review. It works better on desktop than mobile site because the mobile lets you click on a brand but doesn't automatically take you down to the posts, forcing the user to scroll to the bottom of the screen to read what they clicked on. Pretty stupid, but apparently it's the best they can do. In regards to the writing, they only offer a grey font (a little on the light side for my liking, but again, no choice), but otherwise the posts themselves look fine. You also have the option to use a vertical brand list on each article page, which may or may not be easier to navigate on both desktop and mobile. You be the judge.

There is a method to my madness, however. While far from ideal for blogging, GoDaddy Airo's main strength is commercial online product sales, and they offer a slew of services for those who want to sell from their site. While not currently a commercial site, I plan on dabbling with making a perfume in the future, which may or may not be something I want to sell (will have to see how that all goes, of course), so by the end of 2026 or early 2027, that will potentially be a thing. For that, GoDaddy will deliver the goods, should I go in that direction. And with the number of formulas I have, there's a good chance that at least one will be worthy of small batch production and distribution. My plan is to formulate something that will smell of ballpark Creed-like quality (maybe 75% there) and sell it for Davidoff prices (sub $100). When I see what the chems are priced at, it's amazing to me the markup on these niche frags. It's also amazing to me that people have given up on the middle class buyer who just wants something that smells of 1970s Brut quality for under $300, and can't find it because it doesn't exist. 

So I essentially went into this looking for a fragrance blog site that could double as a merchant site. There were competitors to GoDaddy that offer similar things, but Airo's ease of use and beginner-friendly merchant options (sort of) were fine for my needs. I've read a lot of criticisms of the user-friendliness of this host, but thus far have only had simple and straightforward experiences. I'm not thrilled with the limitations for site building, but I have a fairly low-tier plan and don't expect much more than what's on offer, so I guess I shouldn't complain. Feedback is always welcome, of course, and you'll be able to find me on Fragrantica if you need to reach out and have a convo about anything fragrance related: My fragrantica page (link here).

Also, please bear with me in regards to the number of new posts here. I will continue to post for the remainder of the year, but you'll probably notice a decrease in the frequency of postings, all of which will be due to the transition. Don't panic. Once I'm fully up and running in the new location, things will get "back to normal," as my grandmother would say. See you there!

A Big Announcement

Starting in 2026, From Pyrgos will move to a dot-com address, and will no longer be updated here on Blogger. On January 1st of next year I will officially redirect all traffic from this address to the new one. The new site is already up, and you're welcome to go there now and enjoy the new layout, but it will take me a few months to get all the content transferred and updated. 

Some brands will see new (shorter) reviews that have been rewritten to better reflect my current opinions. There will be tweaks to the existing site with possible new pages added, so if you're already there, bear in mind that things will likely change. The new domain was created out of a perhaps irrational fear of mine that one day Blogger will be no more. It occurred to me that Blogger is an outdated platform that gives serious Y2K vibes, and it's entirely possible that in the next five years or so Google will retire it. If that happens, I want to be securely relocated where I have total control. 

There will be an update to this before Christmas, so stay tuned. Fear not, dear readers -- From Pyrgos will continue onward, here for the next 4 months, and there for the rest of its existence. Websites are curious things, with their own mortality (Old Spice Collectibles recently died) and I'm well aware of how attached people get to their good reads. My hope is to keep providing good reads for years to come. For now, content will continue to be published here. I expect to be done with the content transfer and site design by Thanksgiving, but that might be ambitious.