I’ve toyed with the idea of switching blogging platforms before but I’ve always thought it’d be too hard. I’m thinking maybe I was right.
For the last week or so I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get my blog moved from Blogger to WordPress. There are some great import / export applications to help the job along but there’s still a lot of work to be done. I think I’m finally there.
With over two thousand posts from over four years of blogging, importing posts was hard enough, but then came the job of pulling in over five and a half thousand comments from Haloscan. Not an easy thing to do and it would have been impossible if it wasn’t for the help of Justin who went well and truly above the call of duty in ensuring that everyone’s comments travelled to the new blog. I suggest that Justin should be knighted immediately.
If you read The Journey through an RSS feed you probably won’t really notice the change but I’m hoping that those who click through to the site will find that it not only looks cleaner but is faster to load.
Helping me right through the process has been Snoskred who is not only hosting the blog at a very reasonable price but has worked tirelessly to see the switch completed. She is a brilliant person to have on your side.
So, what do you think? I’d love to get your opinion on the new look blog. There may be more changes as I continue to tweak but I’d really appreciate your thoughts.
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I love the template and design, it looks fantastic.
It probably would not have been so difficult to make the switch if you hadn’t had such a long history on Blogger. 😉
The best part is, now the work is all over and you can sit back and enjoy the new blog, and the benefits of WordPress. My favourite benefit is the ability to blog in advance. I sat down at the start of December and wrote an entire month of the song of the day in one two hour long sitting. WordPress is set to publish one each day for the rest of the month, and I don’t have to do anything else to make it happen.
I wrote this down and it’s stuck to the side of my computer screen, you might want to do the same.
To publish in the future –
Check edit timestamp box (on right hand sidebar within write post screen)
Set date and time in future (just below edit timestamp box)
Set Post Status to “published” (on right hand sidebar within write post screen)
Hit publish.
But there are so many benefits, I wouldn’t really know where to begin listing them all.. 😉
Cheers,
Snoskred
I like the colour and the layout, Rodney – simple and clean, especially given the amount of info you have on your blog.
nice new look mate… had to reset my RSS feed though – Bloglines was saying it had lost a connection to you.
no worries all fixed now.
You done good Rodney ! Well done. It looks great.
Now you will have a much greater control over the layout, comments, etc. You also have to do your own backups as well … I always thought blogger had an ugly commenting scheme – now you can have it all work together nicely.
Hopefully the spammers will leave your blog alone. Mine gets hit so badly that even akismet doesn’t work properly anymore. I had to install WP_HashCash – which stopped automated spam comments dead.
davidp.
Thanks for the encouraging comments. 🙂
Deano, I’m not sure what the issue with Bloglines could be but I’m hoping it will resolve itself pretty quickly.
Bloglines was combining all my subscriptions to read my FeedBurner feed. I’ve changed the details of the FeedBurner feed and it’s working fine but Bloglines isn’t showing any of the new posts yet.
It looks good. I thought of switching over too, but it seemed like so much work. And I still like the idea of running a blog for free because I’m really cheap. Haha.
Hey Tony, you could always doe the free WordPress thing at wordpress.com
Hi Rodney – it looks great 🙂 Glad Snoskred could help you out.
Thanks for the compliment, Meg, and especially for pointing me in the right direction. Snoskred has been brilliant.
It looks very professional – too professional? Kinda cold? But maybe I´m just too used to the warm brown the “old” one had.
I´m curious to see the other new changes – hopefully I don´t knock over, I have a forced internet break ´til Monday 😉
I suggest making the blog header “clickable” as I’m used to being able to click the header to get back to the home page. Just a minor usability feature…
Other than that, I like this layout/template much better than the old one, coz it’s ‘cleaner’ and neater.
The new blog looks great Rodney. I’ve been considering changing also; we’ll see.
yeah i deleted your feed from bloglines and then re-added it and all your new posts come through fine.
Thanks for the reminder to swap feeds via the old feed (very clever – I didn’t do it immediately and had so forgotten).
Good job on the switch to WP. It’s a much better tool. Takes a bit of a time getting the feel of writing on an unfamiliar screen (that’s what I found anyway) but it looks so much cleaner and templates are easy to adapt and change so experiment a bit! I like the blue but the header feels a little sterile.