jmmv ([info]jmmv) wrote,
@ 2005-10-15 13:24:00
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Blogger

Two years ago or so, I registered a weblog at Blogger, which only lasted a week (don't bother looking for it; it was deleted). At that time, I didn't like that site much, specially because it lacked a very important feature: integrated support for comments. Yes, you could use external utilities/sites to host comments, but that was complex.

However, a few minutes ago, I discovered that they now have comments support; yay! I spent some time surfing their site and found it very intuitive. Also, I registered a new weblog (whose name I won't unveil yet, but a friend of mine will know which it is ;-) just to see which features they support now.

And all I can say is that it seems better than Livejournal... Here are some reasons:

  • Blogger applies the weblog style to all pages: posts and comments. Here at Livejournal, only the front page gets the look you design, but all comment ones have a standard, non-customizable and ugly look (I don't know about paid accounts).
  • As regards the style, Blogger lets you customize it completely, editing the HTML code directly. Livejournal does not let you do this unless you have a paid account.
  • Blogger addresses are shorter and easier to remember: http://<blogname>.blogspot.com/ vs. http://www.livejournal.com/users/<user>.
  • The blogger interface seems to be more intuitive than Livejournal's one.
  • Blogger lets you post images on your blog (without external links).
  • Blogger lets you post by e-mail.
  • Neither Livejournal nor Blogger have support to track blog statistics. However, Blogger lets you add statistics trackers from other sites, which is a plus.
  • My beloved Drivel supports both systems, so easier migration from this POV.

So... I'm seriously considering migrating this blog there, because the reasons mentioned above. However, there are two things against this idea: people will have to update their address (though I don't think there are many readers out there ;) and, worst of all, I don't know if it's possible to easily migrate all the existing posts to the new site (and this is a must).

Anyone has comments on this? Any counter-arguments or suggestions? :-)

Edit 18:08: The statistics item was added.


(5 comments) - (Post a new comment)

reading, migrating
(Anonymous)
2005-10-15 03:56 pm UTC (link)
Hi,

FWIW I'm reading your blog via http://people.bsdplanet.net/, so you may not see any hits for that at all.

About migration, I'd like to hear any findings you make there. Right now I use some homegrown software for my NetBSD blog, as I simply never found the time to investigate other blogs, and getting my posts out of them in some way other than clicking through all the pages and saving the HTML is important for me, too.

Keep up the good work!


- Hubert

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: reading, migrating
[info]jmmv
2005-10-15 04:04 pm UTC (link)
Hi Hubert,

As regards the "hits" you mention, I don't have any way at the moment to keep track of my blog activity (I see I missed to mention this in the post). Blogger does not have integrated stats, but it lets you add external stat counters to your blog (something that I've already done in my test page). Yet another reason for the switch :-)

And about the migration... Livejournal lets you export all messages of your blog (on a month basis) as CSV or XML formats. It does not preserve comments, but it is good to backup all your data. Blogger, OTOH, does not have such export facilities (yet), although they have a little FAQ that explains a hack to backup all your posts.

Unfortunately, Blogger does not have any easy way to add the posts. I'm now investigating the mail-to-blogger feature to see if I can do it in an easy way (without losing timestamps), or I'll check how Drivel posts to the site to see if I can hack some little script to do the whole job. Adding 180 posts by hand is not something I want to do...

Thanks for the comments!

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Not only blogger
(Anonymous)
2005-10-17 06:46 am UTC (link)
There are lots other ones which makes blogger a toy. Some options I recomend are the following:

  • Zoomblog: (http://www.zoomblog.com) Also supports send emails with post to all your subscribers. I love this feature from it.

  • Bitacoras.com (http://www.bitacoras.com): Spanish service. Currently it supports templates, WebFTP, post by email and user handling.


Of course, you can always use your favourite Unix-like flavor to run a personalized Drupal (http://www.drupal.org) or BBlog (http://www.bblog.com) (I used this one time ago, and im considering back to this).

--
Daijo - Caldero de Temas (http://blog.daijo.org)

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: Not only blogger
[info]jmmv
2005-10-17 01:43 pm UTC (link)
I might go the self-hosting route if I had a server with long uptime and if I had the time to maintain it. I've had this experience with mail management: for a long time, I had run my own server where I received the mail, filtered it and sorted it. It required maintenance and "broke" from time to time. After switching to Gmail, I've simply forgot about all those problems, and I just "use the service" now. Less problems for me.

I may check the other two, though. But I kinda like Blogger, and have almost completed the migration :-) Thanks.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Not only blogger
(Anonymous)
2005-10-24 12:24 am UTC (link)
For what is worth, I just tried Zoomblog (never heard of it before) and although I have yet to play a bit more with it, so far I love it. The signup process is a bit painful, it takes you to another site, egrupos.com, that bundles a whole bunch of subservices I don't care about (email groups, social networking, etc), but once you're signed in, the zoomblog service itself is, IMHO, really sweet. But of course, YMMV... Does anyone else have any experiences to share about this site?

(Reply to this) (Parent)

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