Moving home

Dear very small readership

The long and short of this (well, the short of it) is that I’m going to move by blog away from Google’s Blogger to WordPress in the near future. This will mean that:

  • The URL will remain the same.
  • EXCEPT…if you read a feed this will probably be at a new URL (probably https://rosswintle.uk/feed/). As this is a new feed you may initially see posts that you’ve already seen.
  • There will be a new look – which may change again in the near future. (I’m working on a Magic Roundabout, road-sign styled theme. But my graphic design skills aren’t much good and I don’t really have the time! We’ll see).
  • You may need a new login to submit comments. I’m reviewing how to play this one.

Apologies for the inconvenience. A detailed explanation (the long of it) is below.

I actually first started Blogging several years ago – I was an “early adopter” if you like. I made a few posts and then gave up – partly out of embarassment.

Last year my writing took off, partly as a form of therapy during a difficult time of life, partly as a way to track and report what was going on with me health wise, and it’s just bumbled on since then. Regular readers will know that it’s mostly notes to self that I hope will be informative/interesting to others, and I hope that my writing will continue in that form.

And alongside this I’m a big fan off Google’s online services.  I know that some think they’re evil, but things like GMail and Google Reader are so feature-rich and easy to use…and growing in features too…that I’m hooked.

The one service that, in my opinion, hasn’t kept up and that suffers from being Google’s, is Blogger – the software that publishes this blog.  Specific niggles would be:
  • Pages are big and take long to download
  • Templates are tricky to edit (even for a relative expert like me!)
  • Photos from URLs are a nightmare to add and integration with Google’s own Picasaweb and the competitor’s Flickr is non-existent.
I’ve recently started hosting my own, private journal over at WordPress.com and it’s REALLY impressed me.  It’s fast, it uses good, open standards, it’s got a great dashboard (and an even better one with v2.7 which is awesome!) and it’s being developed at quite a rate of knots.
So shifting “Magic Roundabouts…” is a no-brainer for me.  There’s a little work to do, but WordPress even imports from Blogger – comments, users and all.
There MAY in fact be two shifts.  I’m contemplating where to host but want to move quick.  In all cases, I’ll keep you posted.
Thanks for reading and for bearing with us during non-essential maintenance.