There ain't no such thing as a free lunch

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.

Martina

04/01/2012 I am closing comments now. Feel free to comment on the new blog, perhaps on the about page if your comment doesn't deal with my wonderful German garden gnome photos, ;-).
See you all there!