Short version:
blackandwhiteandcolours moved here.
Long version:
I am leaving blogger ...
I have been using blogger for almost five years now and most of the
time - really, 99.999% of the time - I was really happy
with it.
Not much to do, just drag a gadget here, arrange some gadgets
there and voilà ... website design was done. No worries
about security, patching, databases, php and all the rest.
In January things started to break and they don't seem to ever get fixed.
Like so many others in the Internet and elsewhere (there is a world
elsewhere, yes!) I am convinced Google is neglecting many
of its other services because of google+ - but, alas ...
At first blog roll didn't work anymore.
I couldn't edit, couldn't add or delete any new blogs. I subscribed to
a Google Help forum thread.
Nothing happened.
Many
other bloggers described the same issue.
Sometimes bloggers complained about their critical comments being deleted (true, I always checked - and these
were never impolite or rude comments).
Today (3/29) I checked - the thread doesn't exist anymore.
Only thing left is a dysfunctional "Save" button in the blog roll
widget since January.
Did I mention the blog roll issue never made it to blogger-status?
Next thing was the "captcha" incident.
Suddenly the captchas were illegible.
A preceding announcement on
blogger-buzz? Nope.
One of the important things of blogging is communication, isn't it?
There should be an easy way to comment for everyone. I
didn't want anyone of my readers to get a headache because of trying
to decipher some white-on-black gibberish.
I deactivated the captchas.
The way to do this was not that obvious since you had to go back to
the old editor. Some other bloggers asked me how to do
this. Not documented.
Google simplified matters one or two days later - but really.
I_was_annoyed already.
Then it was activated again by default in the new editor. Duh.
The
only way right now to have things running smoothly is to visit your
own blog daily as a different user, try to comment and generally have a look at it.
Then suddenly I wasn't able to subscribe to comments on other blogs.
Another Google Help forum thread.
Another one that
doesn't exist anymore.
What I learned when the thread still existed
was that subscribing to comments was only available with
the embedded comment form.
A comment form many bloggers don't use
because of some other issues.
I know that moving from blogspot to some other system won't help me
with this issue - but: how do I know how long subscribing
to comments will work on my blogger blog?
Blogging lives on the communication between people.
I want to read
what other people are saying.
I want to know about
different views.
I want to hear the answers to my questions.
It's simply not manageable to do all this without the ability of
subscribing to comments.
We are blogging.
Not monologuing.
(Is this a word? If not it should be :-)!)
A blog without a nice easy comment system isn't a blog. It's what we
had some 20 years ago when we made our own websites with
an editor and uploaded the files via ftp.
However ... there ain't no such thing like a free lunch.
So I am moving.
I have
moved already, to be honest, and you can find my new
blog here.
I would be happy to meet you all there!
Feel free to comment or email about
glitches, issues, wishes ... whatever :-).
I am the captain of
my own blog.
I do hope. ;-)
I kind of imported the blogroll to a page with static links and
I am using my pinterest board as another means
to show my appreciation for your blogs.
I have no idea how long
pinterest might live but right now it is very nice and
convenient as a link site for photography blogs. Just ignore pins that
want to sell you some new perfume.
If you don't find your blog on my pinterest board it might be you are
using a dynamic blogger template - they can't be
pinned.
Or it might be I simply made a mistake - don't hesitate to contact me
about this!
Or because you/your hoster/your website provider simply denied
pinning. Can't do anything about this.
I also tried to import all old blogger posts to the new blog - comments didn't work
out, thumbnails didn't work out, layout didn't work out.
I'll try to fix some of this in the future. Not sure if things can
be fixed, though.
The scrappress ... hum, I think I might move it, too.
But not today.
Here comments will be closed on April 1st - not joking, ;-)
This blog will be open until ... someone (not me) shuts it down.
Right
now I am more interested in taking photos and posting
photos.
And have fun.
