Wednesday, April 23, 2008

I Need Help

I'm thinking about moving the blog to Wordpress because it just seems to be the spot to be.

Anyway, I would appreciate any input people can offer me on how to move all my blog posts over there, and if the grass is really greener.


Thanks.

13 comments:

Frolic said...

I use Wordpress on a blog hosted on my own server. I like it, it's stable, but you have to be technically minded. My knowledge of geeks things are limited, but I did learn HTML and CSS when I set up my blog.

My biggest complaint is that the docs for Wordpress are nearly incomprehensible to non-Geeks.

I think Wordpress also has some kind of hosting service. Perhaps they have real humans who can answer you questions.

Big Man said...

Are you a new reader of the blog?

If so, welcome and thanks for the input.

Frolic said...

I am a new reader. My pal Kevin Allman posted about the blog, which is how I found it. Always interested in hearing more smart comments about life in our city.

Feel free to shoot me an email if you want more details about my Wordpress experience. I imported my original blog from Blogger several years ago. It wasn't hard then, and I'm sure the process is easier now.

Email: taprice at mac period com

Truthiz said...

Wish I could help you out Big Man but the truthiz I took just enough IT courses to meet my college requirements.

_it's sad..lol.

Anonymous said...

Supposedly, you can import your blog from any number of existing blog hosts (blogger, typepad, livejournal and more...or so the wordpress folks say). I don't know if blogger and blogspot are the same...but they sure seem to use the same logo, so I'm guessing so.

I have pretty lousy technical knowledge and only a smattering of HTML knowledge, but I was able to figure out the basics of wordpress pretty easily. So, I guess I disagree then with Frolic on the need for technical knowledge.

I have no frame of reference as far as other blog hosts, so I cannot tell you relative merits, but I've liked wordpress so far. I might suggest you open a wordpress account just to play around with things before you make the jump. You can make more than one wordpress blog once you have an account, so you could start with something just as a test and then establish a second blog later for the real thing if you find you like it.

Gye Greene said...

Aw, stay with blogger. :)

For what it's worth, I read seven(?) blogs pretty regularly, and except for the two that are self-hosted, all are on blogspot/blogger.

Among other things: once I sign in to my Google account, I can leave comments without having to re-sign-in. Handy!


--GG

Unknown said...

Sniffle...why are you leaving us just to be trendy?
Are we not good enough for you anymore?
Sniffle...

I have no useful advice, but always plenty of guilt whenever you need it!

Frolic said...

"I have pretty lousy technical knowledge and only a smattering of HTML knowledge, but I was able to figure out the basics of wordpress pretty easily. So, I guess I disagree then with Frolic on the need for technical knowledge."

I should probably explain a little more about my Wordpress experience (I can see everyone with no interest in geeky matter nodding off about now...).

Set up was easy. No real technical knowledge need. Just use an FTP program to upload the files. I think a lot of hosting services will even do this for you. Importing my previous posts was more or less automatic.

Upgrading the program requires you to erase all but a few essential files with an FTP program and then upload the upgrade. Easy, and pretty much foolproof if you back up the blog first. Although probably more work than Blogger.

I got into trouble, though, with the template I created. I know just enough about coding websites to be dangerous. I built a template that matched my homemade Blogger template (I even learned CSS to do it!). And then along came an upgrade and everything went to hell. Error messages from the database were spewing out across the blog. Commenters all appeared as "Anonymous."

In the upgrade, the Wordpress team had changed a bunch of tags and elements of the page's structure.

I could have just selected another off the rack template and been done with me. For some reason, I was not that smart. I read the instructions on the Wordpress wiki for upgrading a template, but they didn't make any damn sense. I got some help from the users forums. But basically I spent a lot of time playing with code to get it fixed.

Don't get me wrong, I still like Wordpress and don't plan on changing. It gets better all the time, and in general I like using open source programs.

I think Wordpress is great for the basic user who's happy to use a standard template with some minor modification. It's great for advanced users who know how to read all that code.

It's tricky for mid-level users, like myself, who want to tweak things a little more but can't always get themselves out of trouble when they break it (or would rather spend their extra hours doing something other than poring over computer code).

Hope this helps. I'm not trying to discourage you from Wordpress, but I think it works best for certain types of users. You just have to decide if it's a good fit for you.

Big Man said...

Thanks Frolic


To everybody else

I'm not certain I want to move. But, I like the comment setup better and I like the overall style of the blogs better over there. However, I'll probably stay with blogger until I make the big plunge and get my own self-hosted website.

Imhotep said...

Big man, I'm not a tech guy, can't help you there.

However; nothing wrong with trying something new, especially if spiritually moved to do so. Also it never hurts to get added to the blog roll on other sites.

But like my daddy said, the grass may be greener on the other side, but you still got to mow it!

Leigh C. said...

I happened upon blogger and simply stayed with it. Some folks ahve had serious problems with blogger eating their posts and eating others' comments on their posts, but my experience has been good.

Do what you've got to do. We'll all find you!

Anonymous said...

I'm trying to move my Movable Type blog to Wordpress. Why? Because MT shut down on me and for the life of me, I can't fix it.

I'm afraid that I'll lose all of my old posts when I convert.

Anonymous said...

Big Man,

Like you I started out on blogger www.killbigotry.com before moving to Wordpress to start COSELLOUT. Blogger is easier to set up on the front end, but wordpress has more plugins and options on the back end. If you value your blog enough to have a short-term hassle, then I would suggest moving over to wordpress. All over your files will migrate over quite easily.

Given the quality of your blog, I would advise the move... if I were your advisor of course :-)




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