Sunday, May 22, 2011

Weekly Wrap-up for May 22, 2011: Tales of a Grumpy Blogger.

I am not very happy with Blogger. Besides the minor meltdown the site had last week, I haven't been able to post all week-making me incredibly cranky. The couple scheduled posts I had went up, but any attempts to publish a new post just didn't happen.

I'm cranky.

And I am thisclose to transferring over to Wordpress. If I do decide to make the switch, it won't be until summer. For those of you who have transferred over, how much of a pain is it? I'm so-so with technology, so I am a little worried about taking this on.

Today also marks the 37th day in a row of work. It truly is insane. I hit a brick wall this week with working both jobs. My hours were upped last week and I ended up working every weeknight. My hours, after today, are 38 for the park, and the normal 5 days/week at the school. Insane, right?

Anyway, I hit a brick wall and when I wasn't working, I was sleeping. I am overtired and really cranky, but I am trying to hold it together. I am doing okay, given the circumstances. Anyway, all this working hasn't helped my crankiness and my goals here. So if I am absent like I was this week, no panicking, okay?

I hope you all have great reading weeks, and for those of you at BEA, have a blast! I wish I was there!

17 comments:

  1. Well I know Wordpress has an actual program where you can transfer your entire Blogger website to their server. I have never done that of course, but have tried Wordpress in the past.

    However, I have had a terrible issue with changing URLs and everything - which you probably remember! My blog 'followers' could not get my posts on their feed, and I had to do so many things just to solve it. It wasn't an easy task.

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  2. I don't have the nerve to even attempt a move to Wordpress. And I have total sympathy for your crankiness, I remember one summer in college where I didn't have a day off for more than a month -- I was working at Metro Beach during the day and waiting on tables at Big Boy at night. Somedays I would work 18 hours, sleep about 4 hours, and go back and work another shift at the beach. It was awful.

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  3. Supposedly switching to free Wordpress is easier than self-hosted because you can't control the technical side of things - it does it all for you. On the other hand, you have limited options for designing your page. It was hard for me to move over, but now that I did and have gotten used to WP, I really like it much better there. Everything is so much more...controlled. Consistent. Good luck, whichever you decide!

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  4. Take care of yourself first and foremost!!! I certainly understand the crankiness (and I haven't worked 38 days in a row).

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  5. Oh man, I wonder why you had a hard time posting this week. I haven't had any trouble this week!

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  6. I used to have my old blog, November's Autumn, on Blogger and made the switch to Wordpress at a friend's suggestion; I've been very happy with how it operates and found the dashboard and organization of posts etc. nicer to navigate.

    It's fairly easy to make the actual transfer, you go to "settings" -> "export blog" -> "download blog" and save the file to your computer.

    After you've signed up on WP and registered your blog you scroll down to "tools" -> "import" -> "blogger" Where it says "Have a blogger export file?" you should see a "browse" button, click on it and then click on the file you've saved to your computer from blogger. "Upload file and import" and WP will automatically get everything up.

    Hope it helps!

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  7. For free Wordpress I think it' as easy as hitting import. I just transferred to self hosted and Carrie from Books and Movie's did it for me which made it pretty much pain free. He charges $36 a month for hosting which is pretty fair. I'm really glad I switched!

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  8. Ash is right. I used to be on Blogger. I literally hit the import button at Wordpress, and had everything transferred in about thirty seconds. (At the free Wordpress site -- which is Wordpress.com, as opposed to Wordpress.org.)

    Some of the posts that transferred had some space issues between the paragraphs. That was the only problem, and it wasn't a big one. Just that in some, paragraph-space-paragraph-space-paragraph might look like paragraph-paragraph-paragraph-space-paragraph.

    Otherwise, all comments, tags, etc transferred right over. Pictures and everything.

    Importing doesn't do anything to your blogger site, so you could do it at any time at Wordpress to test it, and not hurt this place at all. Signing up at Wordpress, also takes about thirty seconds - tops.

    Wordpress is awesome.

    (Feel better!!)

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  9. I started a movie/tvshow review blog over at Wordpress, and I'm debating switching my book blog over to it.

    It's a LOT different, and takes a bit to get used to, but it's nothing that you can't figure out. Just be patient with it, try the tutorial, explore, etc. And once you get used to it, posting with wordpress is a WHOLE LOT easier. It's easier to insert photos / videos, and I haven't had any HTML problems.

    If you decide to switch, I'll still be a reader of your blog :-) Good luck with your decision!

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  10. I agree with Jillian - transferring to WP is easy as pie. I suppose the only issue is letting people know they should follow you over there as I presume it won't transfer RSS feeds? I had the same problem with spacing issues but then that has seemed to fix itself lately I thought - maybe due to themes?

    WP has a better commenting system I think (I hate bloggers) and the free site is ok if you don't want to customise it a lot (I believe if you want to fiddle on WP you have to pay for the privilege.

    Theme-wise I think that you get a good selection and some of them you can still alter the colours, header and general layout (columns, side bars, widgets etc). The themes are all quite different from each other whereas with Blogger, in my opinion it's virtually the same thing, different colours/bits and pieces unless you can customise it yourself.

    That is my experience anyway.

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  11. Transferring to WP is pretty easy. I had a hard time with some formatting issues, though, so watch out for that.

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  12. Pretty much what everyone else said about transferring from Blogger to Wordpress. I did it a couple years ago for another (non-book) blog of mine and it went perfectly smoothly. Probably the biggest thing is to remember to direct readers from the old address to the new.

    Good luck with all the work this week! Hopefully you can get the rest you need.

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  13. I am thinking of making the transfer to Wordpress too...I may try it today...I'll let you know how it goes...

    I can't believe you are working two (basically)full time jobs...you are one amazing girl! But, to help you through...just think of all the extra book loot cash you are making!!!

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  14. Thinking of you. I hope that things improve for you. Take care deary, it's more important that you catch up on sleep than blog.

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  15. 37 days of work! Ugh. I moved from Blogger to WP long ago, before there was much content on my blog and before I had many (any?) readers. I went Blogger to WordPress.com to self-hosted, and that route wasn't bad. It just takes time. I'm definitely glad I switched.

    Hope things calm down for you!!

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  16. I highly recommend Wordpress. Like anything, it's not perfect, but before I had my book blog I had a recipe blog with blogger so I can say with confidence that there's no comparison.

    The tools are great and user-friendly for the most part (though I will admit that it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to get drop-down navigation).

    Also, the support is awesome. Whenever I've had a question or an issue that required support, I got a personal response from someone within an hour. Unbelievable.

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  17. Oh I feel for you on the double full time job thing. It sucks. I do the same thing for part of the year. Luckily mine is over for summer and hopefully yours is too. Hope you get another teaching job for next year. :)

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