२७ मे, २००५
People keep telling me to leave Blogger...
After my recent problems. They say they're not having problems where they are. But their place is much smaller than Blogger. How do I know it will stay around, as I feel sure Blogger will? And if it does stay around, won't that be because it gets bigger? If so, won't it encounter the kind of problems Blogger has had to manage?
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There is also the possiblity of going to one's own domain. If you do so, I highly recommend Hosting Matters and WordPress.
The question becomes: are you willing to pay a bit to blog and how much technical expertise do you have ? (you don't need all that much, and there are people to hire at reasonable rates, for that matter).
BTW, althhouse.com and althouse.net are taken, but althouse.us is available.
If you would like more detailed info, drop me an e-mail.
Having used Blogger, I must say that I am far happier with my own domain and WP--but then again I have a tad of the computer geek in me.
I would definitely only do it with my own domain. The unavailability of the obvious ones is a factor in not changing from the familiar URL I have now. I'm not interested in spending time on the technical things, and I'm not staying on Blogger out of a desire to save money. I don't want to put time into technical things, but whenever Blogger has troubles that does consume my time. It would take time to figure out how to switch -- and several people are offering to help me -- and then there's the unknown world of the new set of problems.
EddieP: That's the way I tend to think.
Can anyone address Google? Do you think Blogspot blogs do better in Google? I get a lot of traffic from Google.
Ann,
I spend about $150 a year on PoliBlog--that includes the hosting costs and the domain name.
The switch itself is easy--and no doubt many would be willing to help, myself included. The only "hard" parts are the archive import and the template--and yours is pretty straightforward. There are a couple of other issues, such as securing internal permalinks.
Blogging via WP is a world better than Blogger (as is Moveable Type--which I also used for a while, but prefer WP).
You would initially see a dip in traffic while the Google-bots found you, and, of course, the move to a new domain would require people changing their blogrolls and such.
Steven: "A world better" -- that seems like an awful lot. I've used Movable Type (guest-blogging on Instapundit) and it seemed basically the same as Blogger.
As for moving my template: I want a nice new design. I'm only using this standard template because I've been avoiding everything technical. Which is of course why I find technical problems especially bad: I'm forced to look at the aspect of blogging that is not at all interesting to me.
As a variant, you could go to your own domain and use blogger. I do, and loading the pages to your own server space tends to avoid a few of the problems of using BlogSpot.
Ann,
Such things are subjective, to be sure. However, I have continued to use Blogger for a few group blogs I contribute to on occassion, so am still familiar with it, and find WP to be several quanta better.
I will say that Blogger is better now (and closer to MT) than it was when I used it, but I still find it inferior.
Of course, one of the reasons I left BlogSpot in the first place was because of ongoing, annoying technical problems--which I assume have continued.
Thanks, Sandi. But I dislike the way those two sites look. I also dislike the TypePad blogs I can think of. The design is depressing! I'm not thrilled with my template, but if I move, it will be to something I think looks great. I think this will require a fair amount of work. I'm certainly not going to just pop into that set up and look like that!
hecky-darn...you've got all kind of geeky fans (like me) who are also CSS gurus. ask, and all kind of new look-y goodness will come.
but honestly, it isn't that tough to make the blog look different. nor is it that difficult to make a new instillation in a new Content Management System.
Hi Ann,
I would recommend starting with Pancho's suggestion to use Blogger with your own domain. That is what I do and it has a number of advantages:
1. Blogger maintains back-ups for you. If you were to have some unforeseen glitch on your server or accidentally delete your blog files from your server, you can republish your blog to restore the files.
2. It will give you a chance to see if your problems are related to Blogger's programming or just Blogger's servers. Blogger, while not the greatest software, is very easy to use and very effective, in a simplistic sort of way.
3. You can retain continuity of blog software. ie, All of your posts will be in a single format/software. (This may or may not be important to you, it is something that I wanted.)
Despite what people will say, No Blogging Holy Grail Exists. All programs/services have limitations and holes. People always see their preferred choice through rose colored glasses. My experience with MT is second hand, but still frustrating. My friend was forever disabling comments to prevent spam, patching MT, re-enabling comments, and disabling comments again because of comment spam.
I don't get anywhere close to the traffic you get, but I have been very happy with hosting my blog on my own domain. I use Globat for hosting,and have 112GBps per month of bandwidth and 3.75Gbytes of storage space. I paid for my two years in advance, but I think it worked out to around 7-8 dollars a month. (plus it doubles as photo & ftp space for my friends & family)
k.s-c: Thanks for bringing up a factor I hadn't considered. I love the comments now, and I had a terrible experience before when I wasn't using Blogger registrations. I have almost no problem with spam: maybe five comments in all, easily and quickly deleted. Those who are defending other solutions should address the issue of comments.
I had to laugh at this. When I moved from my other blog host to blogger, several people told me that it was a poor move because otherhost is much more reliable and Blogger has "issues."
The interesting thing is, in the last few days otherhost has been losing posts--as in, I try to go to the URL of an old post and it's gone. And then this last night and morning the archives and comments haven't been working on otherhost as I try to read my friends' blogs. So far this has lasted about 12 hours I think.
Blogger does have issues occasionally, as does any online company. But they seem to fix them relatively quickly.
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