Monday, March 7, 2011

Serious Stuff!

I am seriously considering moving the Blog to WordPress. I opened an non-public account there and copied the entire Blog to that account. In general I like the WordPress format. Photos seem to be easier to post and I think I prefer the format. Many of my Blogging friends have gone to WordPress and seem to be happy.

One good reason is WordPress gives me 3GB of image storage compared to Blogger's 1GB (which I fear I am nearing).

I have a couple of concerns:

1) Will everyone follow me there? I am currently at about 180 hits per day and would hate to have regular readers unable to find the new Blog.

2) Will search engines be able to find me?

3) What happens to links from others Blogs? Many of my hits come from Cancun Canuck and  Travels With Miranda as well as others. They will have to update their links and if they do not, people from their sites will end up on the old dormant Blogger site, which will annoy everyone.

4) When I copied the old Blog over to the test site it added a '>' in front of the title of every one of the 1200 posts. New posts made with Wordpress do not have this annoying '>' so I guess it is just to indicate it is a copied post. It will however be an continuing annoyance, at least to me.

5) I can't think of a #5 but there probably is one.

Comments welcome!

13 comments:

  1. I take it you're moving to a wordpress.com blog, with which I have no experience (I have a self-hosted wordpress.org blog), but most of the following should apply:

    1) Leave a breadcrumb. Make a final post at the Blogger version telling people where to go. Do NOT delete the original blog! You can still go to travelswithmiranda.blogspot.com and find my current blog.


    For a short time, you can decide to overlap the two blogs. I would NOT put the same post on the two blogs. Instead, update the new one and on the old one say 'Blog has been updated: link. Reminder, please update your feed and bookmark.'

    2) Readers will need to update their feed settings or bookmarks. Anyone who thinks that's a hassle is not worth having as a reader.

    3) So long as you do not delete the old blog, the links to Blogger will still work. Who cares which blog people go to for the older posts? Just make sure you leave that breadcrumb to the new blog. There's nothing annoying about that at all. Blogs move all the time.

    4) Not sure. Must be a wordpress.com feature.

    I took my move Seriously back in '08 and went through every post manually to make it looked right. :-)

    5) Reread the Blogger TOS, it'll scare you into doing this move. Google pretty much owns your content and reserves the right to shut you down on a whim.

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  2. Yes, it would be a wordpress.com blog using their free hosting.

    I found a way to get rid of all those ">" things at once but it involves html editing which scares the pants off me.

    I may have to wait until some really nice person who knows what she is doing offers to take my password and do it for me.......

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  3. I use Wordpress. But I like the way your photos, if you click them, fill the page. Mine enlarge but not as big as one might want.

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  4. You can upgrade your storage to 5GB for $5 a year on Google. I recently discovered this allowance includes Picasa Web photo's as well as your blog photos. It was very easy to Sync all my hard drive pictures on Picasa to Google Picasa Web. For $5 a year I don't have to worry about losing my pictures or running out of space for my blog.

    I was on Wordpress for a short time and no matter how much I searched I never could find my own blog. I had the same problems with pictures on Wordpress. Have you tried Windows Live Writer to make your blogposts?

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  5. Hi Eve, Yes I use Live Writer all the time. It is great when you want to write an entry but have no connection. Write it and save it!

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  6. Don't worry, Croft. Your loyal readers will follow you if you tell us how. :) Deanna

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  7. Hi Deanna! Glad to see you are still here!

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  8. Why don't you try a Canadian outfit?

    We use Bravenet out of BC, they have some neat templates which ease the process. I've upgraded to their paid service (no ads) and I'm happy with it.

    Al

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  9. Give me a link to your Blog Al and I will have a look at the format.

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  10. Hi Croft:

    www.almcclughan.com

    Al

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  11. "I may have to wait until some really nice person who knows what she is doing offers to take my password and do it for me......."

    Which SHE is that? :D

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  12. "Which SHE is that? :D"

    The only one I know..... ;)

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  13. OF COURSE - we will follow you anywhere.

    I use Wordpress but have it on my own host. I am happy with them (it).

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