Saturday, May 14, 2011

Because who wants to be like that tree falling in the forest not making a sound?

So on Thursday I put up this post about reading and alone time and such.

It resonated with a number of you. Which always makes me happy.

I'd had a busybusy day, and so I read the comments in my inbox, but didn't have time to get on comment back. And then, then later, when I went to respond, I couldn't log in. And then my post wasn't there at all.

And now it's back, but with none of the old comments.

I've now been using my blog as a journal for four and a half years. It's my holding place for memories of huge and small events - both good and bad. I refer back to it when I'm writing other things. I need it.

And beyond that, I need the comments. I love reading them, love having them in response to things I've written. I go back and read them as I am going through old posts, and they make me laugh and think and wonder and I just love them.

People always say be careful of what you post on the Internet, as it pretty much lives on forever. And I suppose this is true. But it can also disappear on you immediately.

Server outage in Siberia. Poof! Content unavailable!

Now, my blog isn't important in the scheme of the world. It doesn't save lives, promote world peace, or feed the hungry. But it's important to me.

Which makes me wonder if it's time to move to Wordpress. Which, I suppose, would also mean it would be time to enlist the help of a professional. Which is all kind of daunting.

10 comments:

  1. Ach, and then you know, even with the most reliable service, problems sometimes do happen.

    So there it is: a practical reason to turn your blog into a book. Somewhat less ephemeral that way. Oh, I would buy that book ten times!

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  2. I started backing up my blogger blog on wordpress a few months ago. You can import to wordpress all the posts and comments. To be totally cliched, if I can do it, you certainly can. I'm willing to talk you through it, if you need help.

    Also, I think somewhere under settings on blogger, you can now download files of your blog into what kind of file? No idea.

    I share your feelings. When I lost PoliTits and Unglued, I was first world devastated.

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  3. Monique Esselmont5/14/2011 6:24 PM

    I agree... It is time to turn your blog into a book! You do have a large fan base!! :) xoxoxo

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  4. This most recent Blogger outage was particularly bad... but both Blogger and WordPress have had their issues. The problem (hosting millions of blogs, some of which have massive traffic, etc) isn't very easy to solve. The number of sites they host and their wide audience makes them targets for all sorts of bad actors.

    If you have other reasons you want to switch, go for it... but I'm not sure this particular outage is reason enough.

    As for your blog information, If you got to your settings tab, there's a link there at the top to export your blog and all of the comments to a file. Doing that occasionally, plus saving the emails you get when people comment should give you a reasonable backup.

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  5. I'm a professional that handles blog migrations, just FYI ;)

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  6. Just wanted to chime in that migrating to WordPress is not as daunting as some would lead you to believe. I did it, by myself, with a few clicks and less than 30 minutes time.

    You may lose *some* links, but nothing that would kill your readership. Also, WordPress has it's problems, but in my opinion (having blogged on both) it is a superior platform.

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  7. Your blog is important to me :) it's a joy to read. Good luck if you decide to migrate!

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  8. Moving to/backing up content on WordPress is easy - I did it this morning - though I like the template of my Blogger site better. If you need help, let me know. Oh, and I really liked the temporarily lost post - alone time is always important!

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  9. Just caught up on all the posts I've missed since we've had no internet. Wow, that boy of yours is cute! He looks so grown up! And yes I have the same problem as you but with stolen time on the computer - hard to fit everything in, huh! xx

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  10. If you decide to make the move, contact me. I may still be on Blogger myself but it's for business purposes - swear. My business partner and I can totally help.

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Tell me about it.