Every since Blogger started offering "Blogger Beta" last summer, I've dreaded the transition. I've always been sure Blogger would make all its users "upgrade" eventually. I know just enough about new applications and operating systems to fear "upgrades." My Blogger template is a bit of a hack; much of the code I routinely use is borrowed and of uncertain orthodoxy; and I don't really know enough to fix any problems. So I figured the move would take painful hours.
I set aside a day in December, the 19th, to make the switch. Damned if the new Blogger didn't come out of beta that day and the option to switch wasn't offered.
Yesterday I finally found another long block of time in which to face the project. I backed up this whole site with Blue Crab, a process that took two hours and 35 minutes for 697 posts. I backed up the hacked template. I googled "moving to New Blogger" and found nothing very informative.
And so, at 4:22 pm yesterday, I clicked through and told Blogger to make the switch. By 4:31 the move was done -- and everything apparently works!
Over the next few days, because I am compulsive and because I learn a lot about my own blogging from this, I'll be adding "labels" to all the past posts. Hopefully this won't cause a lot of false new RSS feeds -- since I don't understand RSS feeds, I don't know the answer to that one. Blogger offers a process for adding labels, but it is very clunky. Of course doing it at all is slightly mad, so I won't fault Blogger over much on that.
But, over all, my experience of moving this blog to New Blogger was a breeze.
Thanks for the encouragement. Everytime I try to do the conversion, they tell me my "blog is too large," whatever the hell that means.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear. As a lazy non-techie type, I haven't done anythng, but like you say, eventually it won't be an option. I haven't looked - did it move yr comments as well, or do they get lost?
ReplyDelete(hope you had an enjoyable holiday)
onwards!
It seems to have moved old comments. It is also pretty good at sending me an email with any new comments. I had that featured turned on in the Old Blogger but frequently and inexplicably was never notified of comments.
ReplyDeletethanks! maybe I'll give it a try when I've got some free time ahead
ReplyDeleteGreat!!!!! I made the dreaded switch a couple months ago & it was really sort of a no-brainer & I accomplished it with only a minor glitch. A techie I'm not! I swear I'll never get my links list to sit properly! Best wishes to you in 2007!
ReplyDeleteNo problem with the switch here either. But then I wished I hadn't; New Blogger is bad for my particular blog because of early nonstandard decisions I made: I have a separate archive page, blog to my own web space instead of blogspot.com.
ReplyDeleteResulting problems:
1) Mew Blogger doesn't support a separate archive page, and the one I have isn't being updated.
2) since New Blogger doesn't actually let you disable post pages (you can check the "disable" box, but it does no good), any changes to my template result in 2 times as much space being used up -- not good when you want to make a wholesale change to the blog template and your blog occupies 85% of your allotted web space. Stuff I meant to do temporarily for the holidays is now permanent for older archive pages.
There's also (3) the fact that RSS feeds don't sort by publish date, but by modification date. I go back and edit posts, but I don't want them out of sequence on RSS readers.
All in all, I'm pretty annoyed with blogger, and will switch away from it. The changes were not carefully engineered, they figured that 90% were on blogspot.com or had scads of server space, and didn't care about the other 10%.