I’m a bot over WordPress and just want things to be a little easier. I started blogging at Teach and Learn Online and stayed there happily for 2 years. Now after 3 years here, I think I’ll quit it.
But when I started work at Otago Polytechnic and starting showing people how to blog, it became controversial with some of Otago’s IT people. I decided to get to know WordPress in anticipation of IT saying, “ok, we’ll support blogs but only on our own install where we can control it”. Thinking WordPress would be their logical choice I thought I better start getting to know it and encouraging staff to use it so their skills would be transferable.
But to their credit IT have not moved in any of that direction, and I think I might like to go back to Blogger. I’ve never really liked the usability or speed of WordPress, nor the amount of spam and bot action it seems to get. I’m as worried as the next person about Google everything, but I’m not all that precious about content either. Easy come easy go really. There are lots of ways to back up and regenerate content I’ve found. Creating a book from my blog is one of the most rewarding of them all.. I’ve been meaning to do that again these past couple of months, there’s about 3 years of blogging that needs to be brought into a third book just so I can have something tangible on the shelf for all these words. Its a good process to go through, reviewing old notes and reformatting them.
So anyway, I’ve set up a new blog on Blogger. Leigh Blackall. There’s nothing on it for now.. and I’m not entirely sure when I’ll start writing there.. perhaps when I finish the book version of this blog.. that might be a good start. I won’t bother exporting and importing.. its sadly not easily doable from WordPress to Blogger, but nor is it necessary. This blog can stay, as does Teach and Learn Online. All links in tact. Apart from the URL and the template, you could view these 3 blogs as I do.. 1 big blog fluidly distributed across the Internet as though it where one big platform.
Can anyone think of any good reason why I shouldn’t stop this blog and go to my new Blogger blog? I don’t care about loss of readership. I’m confident the ones that count will update their feeds 🙂
Learn Online 
10 comments
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March 21, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Alexander Hayes
I’ve updated my feed reader.
I think the header in your “new” blog is infinetly more you. With a little bit of HTML hacking your new space will integrate your lifestream nicely and we can look forward to Leigh Blackall being Leigh Blackall instead of just the latest educational moniker.
Now…..what are you going to do with this gift – http://www.leighblackall.com
🙂
March 21, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Steven Parker
Hi Leigh
Getting the next book together makes sense, the new blog under your own name seems like the next logical step to evolve your writing. Keep it up.
Cheers
Steven
March 22, 2009 at 7:49 am
leighblackall
My goodness Alex! CHeck out the Way Back Machine to see what I might do with it (see Jan 2005)… but the thing is.. like my flickr account.. the bill comes around always when I am cashless after spending all my savings on some renovation or some long ski trip.. and then it goes down.. it is attractive though.. all the more because its a gift. Looking forward to seeing you Alex so you can show me a thing or two about this lone ranging.
March 22, 2009 at 8:48 pm
John larkin
Subscribed. Waiting to see what happens. Anticipation. Nothing quite like it.
March 22, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Alexander Hayes
Hi.
I have nothing to show you, rather, perhaps togehter we can de-bunk this responsibility theory once and for all…..I suspect deep down that free-ranging is nothing more than compromise, irresponsibility ……..or inversely something far more spiritual.
Till we meet here in the highlands.
March 23, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Keri Morgret
On the flip side, by moving, you’ll be starting from scratch with the search engines. You’ll have a blank slate, little content, no inlinks — why should the search engines trust your content and send visitors your way? Over here, your site is an authority, it has hundreds of posts, lots of visitors, references from other sites, etc. You’re trusted, and your exact same words over here will rank better than on a new site, at least for a while.
You may not lose those who already know about you and move their feed readers, but new people will have a harder time finding your new site via the search engines when they’re looking for your content. I’ll hedge my bets though, and subscribe to the new feed as well. 🙂
April 3, 2009 at 2:25 pm
helenlindsay
Not sure if its a good idea Leigh. Considering you are the guru we all follow, does that mean we should switch too? Wish I was as adept as you, but I still struggle with many aspects of web 2.0 and so do many of our colleagues here I believe. I’ll go check out your new site though and subscribe.
April 9, 2009 at 3:48 am
andi yudianto
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August 27, 2009 at 8:52 pm
nixonn
Please do not stop blogging, i know there are lot of thing need to be done in the internet.
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December 11, 2009 at 12:27 am
leaatendido
Please do not stop blogging.. I really enjoy reading your blogs.
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