KirstenL4W

Sorry if I turned anyone off with yesterday’s post.  This is a blog about me, and I do try not to blog about my bodily functions, but I came up with the idea of blogging about it when I was IM’ing a friend.  I’ll get this blog back to normal now.

I want to blog about the Blogger service.  I know there are still a lot of people still on there.  I had my reasons for staying for  so very long.   First of all, having the access to the css and html code for free was great.  I learned so much having that access.  And lots of blogs are on Blogger, so if you’re looking for new stuff to read, it’s pretty easy.  But I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  Blogger has made some changes that are not friendly to the blogging community at large.  If you are on Blogger, it doesn’t really matter much.   But if you aren’t, then it sucks.

The single biggest change they have made is to the comments.  Without warning, Blogger started requiring an OpenID or a blogger account to comment on other blogs.  I saw my comments drop off to nearly nothing.  I didn’t have a lot of comments to begin with, so seeing them dry up like that wasn’t fun.  Blogger changed things back a bit, allowing a commenter to enter a URL along with their name, with the idea that it will leave a direct link.  Ok, fine.  Those using a Blogger ID still get directed to their blogger profiles - NOT their blogs - and some of those profiles are private so you never get to see the blogger who left the comment.  All in all, it’s a very Blogger-centric way of doing things.

Here on WordPress, if you leave a comment, you are required to leave your email address, though it’s not public.  I don’t collect them for any purpose, but if I want to reply to your comment privately, I can do that.  It also gives you the option to leave a link to your website, which is a direct link, no matter what blogging platform you use.  You can subscribe to comments using any email address.  When commenting on Blogger blogs, I only had the option to subscribe using Gmail.  I have a Gmail account as a backup, but I don’t really use it.  I’ve been using Yahoo for years, and I find the Gmail interface a bit clunky.  I know there are lots of tips out there to get the most out of Gmail, but I haven’t seen enough to make me inclined to want to use it more.

But enough about email.  I’ve ranted enough about Blogger, and if anyone is thinking about leaving, I have an option for you.  I use WordPress, and to elaborate I’ll tell you which one: WordPress.org.  I paid for my own domain name, took a blog friend up on the offer to host it, and making changes and customizations require knowledge of php, which I do not have at this point.  There is an easier way, and that way is WordPress.com.

Wordpress.com has a lot of the same features that Blogger has - it’s free, you can have your blog on line in minutes, and it’s free.  You WON’T have access to the code unless you pay up, but there’s more to a great blog than a great design.  For those who are iffy on switching, Wordpress has thought of that too.  They have an easy import tool that imports all your posts, pictures, comments, and categories with one easy click (just don’t do this more than once or you get double posts).   Then just put a link on your Blogger blog telling people where to find you.  That’s it.  Pretty neat, huh?

Now you will need to recreate your sidebar information, but that isn’t too difficult.  But wanna know what else?  You can have multiple pages, just like a real website.  That is probably my single favorite thing about Wordpress.  New pages are just as easy to set up as a new post is.  Even if you’re not ready to switch, go ahead and set up a Wordpress.com account and play around with it.  When you are ready, it’s super easy.

When you have a few minutes (or more), and/or if you have BBC America, then check out one of my favorite shows: Top Gear.   Even if you aren’t really into cars, it’s a great show.  It’s been described as Motor Trend meets Jackass.  Right now I’m watching them attempt to launch a rocketship made with a Fiat into space.

Something that is a new experience for me since moving to Wordpress is pingbacks and trackbacks. For those who don’t know, these are, to the best of my knowledge, links to your content on another website. I’m not talking about blogrolls - no, this is when your work is quoted, in part or in full, on another website and links back to your site, which is how it gets picked up in your comments as a trackback.

My Music on Mondays posts seem to be the most popular posts for this. Yesterday I checked my comments to see 3 of these, my highest number yet. I’m sure they will spiral out of control as I get more and more popular. Check this out:

Now, I always check these out, just to make sure that at the very least there is a link in there and I don’t have to bitch-slap anyone. But what I don’t get is the name. It’s always different. See those bottom two? Despite the URL, they are the exact same website, yet on one I am “The Gossip Girls” and on another I am “Barbara”. I don’t get that. I mean, I can see how the first one is a trick to get more people to the site with the name of a tv show, but Barbara? Not sure about that one. In all cases, though, the links to go my site.Right now this is a slight annoyance and also somewhat amusing, but at least (to my knowledge) no one has copied my site. Sites like Copyscape can help you figure out if someone has.

I haven’t been this excited about blogging in a long time.  When I first got the blogging bug, I was playing with code constantly, trying to figure it out and really make the blog mine.  I got to a point where I was satisfied with it for a time.  Then I started realizing the limitations of the Blogger service, and they started making changes so that Google can start implementing their plans to achieve world domination.  My comments went down, and I ended up having to change a lot of feed addresses in my reader.  I sorta new for a while that I could do what I wanted on WordPress, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction with Blogger made the decision to switch easy.  Basically, it got to a point where blogging was no longer fun - kinda like when you go to the park but can’t play frisbee, catch, swing on the swings, or anything fun.  That’s how I was starting to feel.  So thanks to Snoskred and her very generous offer of hosting and setup that’s affordable even with the dollar being in a nosedive, I am here.  I still have a lot to learn, but that will come with time.  As it was on Blogger, when I needed to know how to do something, I figured it out.  Here it’s a bit more complicated, but I hope I won’t seriously screw anything up.

I am in the process of getting ready to do a new feature, which I plan on debuting in February.  I won’t tell you what it is yet.  I gotta build up the anticipation, you know!  It is something I have been thinking about for quite some time now, and it will give my blog a bit of focus in addition to the usual babbling about my daily life and other crap going through my mind.  With that being said, I’m going to log off for the night.  I haven’t been feeling too well and we all know how this blogging stuff can suck time like there’s no tomorrow (which means if I don’t stop now, I’ll totally miss tomorrow and wake up on Friday sometime.)

So here I am at my new home! It was a bit of a challenge, since there is a bit of a learning curve here, but I’m up for it. But I can’t lie to you. I am not the one who did the hard work. That credit must go to Snoskred, because she spent I don’t even know how many hours making my new place beautiful and taking care of pesky code issues. Everyone give Snoskred a round of applause!!!

Lisa left me a comment saying that she couldn’t see switching “just because” and wanted to know if there’s a good reason why. Everyone’s reasons for choosing a particular blog platform are different. The OpenID thing on Blogger is pretty much what did it for me, but for a long time I had been thinking about and dreaming about all the things I could do if I had a proper website. I also loved blogging, so I stayed where I was. I’ll be honest, Blogger does have some great features, and I was missing them a bit as I tried to set this up. But overall, for me, this is where I’ve been heading for a long time. I like how easy it is to set up multiple pages on here without an in-depth knowledge of web programming. And as I was in the middle of this, I read of a few blogs who said their traffic went up quite a bit once they went to self-hosted WP.

There is an option for those who want easy and free but not Blogger. WordPress.com is the free version of WP. It’s not as full-featured as WP, for example you can’t download plugins or have ads, but you can have separate pages and WP does make it super easy to import posts from your old blog on a number of different platforms. They also do have options where you can pay a small annual fee to have access to the CSS and other features if those sort of things are important to you. I played around on there quite awhile back and again more recently, and it really helped me get an idea of all the things I can do. Also, WP lets you create and publish a post in the future - not immediately with a future date, like I did with my Christmas Post, but I can actually change the timestamp and it will show up when the clock hits that time. That means I can write a whole bunch of new posts all at once when I have inspiration, then not worry about it for a while. That’s what the pros say they do, so it can definitely work for a little personal blogger like myself.

Since I have the ability to create all these lovely new pages, I do have a few ideas in mind. I am going to have a dedicated page for my blogroll so my front page will be a bit cleaner. I find it a bit easier to check out what other people are looking at when it’s all on a separate page, and I wanted to do the same here. Also, I’m going to be debuting a new weekly feature and will be making a page to showcase that. I’m still working on the New Feature so I’m not going to reveal it just yet, but it’s an idea that’s been kicking around for a long time now and only about a week ago did it turn from an abstract idea into a plan that I can visualize. I’m excited about it, and I hope you like it too.

Do you like my new header picture? I really loved the one Macoosh put together for me, but let me tell you something about the above pic - that is ME in that picture. ME! Boyfriend and I took a trip last May to San Francisco and drove down the Cabrillo Highway before we came home. That particular picture was taken at Pescadero Beach as I walked towards the water to touch the Pacific Ocean for the very first time in my life. It was kinda a big deal for an East Coast girl like myself. When I was looking for a new header pic for my new blog, I thought that would be the perfect one.

So sit back and enjoy the new place. Comments are appreciated as always, and don’t forget to subscribe to my feed and update your blogrolls with my new address.  I’m off to tweak a bit more so I can make my blog everything I want it to be!

Welcome to my new blog!!! I only have a minute but I wanted to get it up. I must be getting to work right now but I will write a longer post later to formally welcome you and introduce you to my blog.

Really. You know I’ve been talking about switching to WordPress, right? Well, I’m not sitting here at the computer blowing smoke out my ass. I have a domain, and the lovely and amazing Snoskred is going to be an instrumental figure in making the change, so if you all ever get sick of me mentioning and linking to her, it’s because all the hard work she does is not going to go uncredited.

I won’t be posting as often in the near future as this changeover is in process, but once everything is up and running I have some great ideas that I can’t wait to implement. New features, new pages, and with the “Post at future date” feature that WP has, hopefully it will appear that I blog more often since I’ll be able to bang out a bunch of posts at once when the inspiration hits.

EEEEEEE! This is going to be the most fun I’ve had on my blog in a long time. I already know this will be well worth it!