Update, new feed and blog address
New Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/idealistcafeblog
New Blog address: http://idealistcafe.com/blog/

I had mentioned in my last post that I'm making the switch to Wordpress. Well, it's now complete. And I've decided that rather than deal with trying to figure out how to redirect the feeds and all that, that I'll just start a new one. (Unless anyone knows a clean and easy way...)

So for all you subscribers, please update your feed readers to use this new feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/idealistcafeblog

I was able to import all my old posts and comments, so all the content is over on the new wordpress powered blog. And I will probably redirect the old blog to the new one, so if you visit the site it will still all be the same, just now powered by wordpress instead of blogger, only the RSS feeds will be different.

The conversion process was pretty easy, I will probably write about it later on... Only hard part was customizing the template to match my old layout.

Labels: blogger

Well, I'm not technically abandoning Blogger right now, but they are making a move which will essentially make it impossible for me to use their service anymore in the future. I can't say I'm disappointed since I've been wanting to move to Wordpress for some time. The only hold up with doing that has been the fact that I would need to totally recreate my template, and quite honestly I just don't feel like doing it.

But anyway, today I get an email from Blogger saying that as of March 26 they will no longer support FTP publishing, claiming that the resources to maintain that are too high. Their claim is that "only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP." I find that statistic rather surprising. That would mean that only 1 out of 200 bloggers using the Blogger service actually post files to their own host?

They say that the two alternatives are a Blogspot URL or a "Custom Domain", neither of which I would consider viable alternatives. Suggesting use of a Blogspot URL is just ridiculous, as there is no way you can run a company or a reputable blog (with some exception) without your own domain. So I guess their alternative for those who want their own domain name is what they call Custom Domains, which is basically taking your custom domain name and pointing the DNS to their servers. I suppose this is a workable alternative, but if you have your own hosting plan already and your site is more than just a blog (which mine is), that doesn't really work without creating a subdomain or moving all my non-blog files to their own separate domain.

It seems like their target audience is people who are new to blogging and don't have a host yet, or those that have no interest in creating any sort of brand name and are ok with a blogspot sub-domain name. Perfectly fine, but it's just rather strange since when I signed up years ago, the Custom Domain solution didn't exist so I was forced to use FTP publishing to my own domain. And now it seems like they are abandoning those like me...

My one remaining option though, (and certainly not one they are promoting), is to make the jump to Wordpress, and in doing so gaining PHP support for my blog files, and continuing to publish files to my own servers. For all the trouble I've been having with Blogger with their code limitations over the past few years, I'm happy to move to Wordpress. I'll probably just keep my old files as they are, and move forward with Wordpress as if it were a new blog.

I guess this is goodbye Blogger.

FYI, when I do this, I'll make sure to let you all know so you can update your feeds if it's necessary.

Labels: blogger