veiled4allah veiled4allah: take this guy up on his offer, PLEASE

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take this guy up on his offer, PLEASE

Date: June 11, 2003 | 10 Rabi al-Akhir 1424 Hijriah
Blog: veiled4allah
Subjects: blogging
Dean Esmay has started a jihad against Blogspot. He wants to help Blogspot bloggers switch to :MT:

Blogging with MT is as easy as can be, but getting it set up is a little tricky if you're not familiar with uploading files by FTP or setting configurations. Dean has an open offer to help you get MT set up and your old Blogger posts imported into MT. You will have to pay for your own domain name and for your hosting, but he has found a good service that costs you only $5/month for hosting and $15/year for the domain name.

If you can spare the money, PLEASE take him up on his offer. If you care about the people who read and link to your blog, you need to get off Blogspot. Most of the time, your archive links don't work. Frequently, your blog can't be loaded. And most of the free commenting systems suck.

This doesn't even get into the backend problems that you know you're facing trying to post to your blog.

Go to Dean's site and sign up for his offer. Run!
~ Posted by Al-Muhajabah, a member of the reality-based community, at 11:51 AM

Comments

Jack said: Total comments: 1  

Nooooo. I'm sorry, but I think a little loyalty to blogger is in order. They did this. They made blogging as easy, even if as annoying, as using hotmail. They still bring in probably dozens, maybe even hundreds of new bloggers each day.

Besides, while I agree that MT is wonderfully powerful, it also seems to usually result in boring, cookie-cutter templates. I don't really care for blogspot much, and yes, it does have trouble loading, etc, but one can still use blogger to publish to their own site, as I do. This isn't really very different than MT.

As for the free comment functions...yeah, they are trouble, but again, they are free. I love the anarchy and chaos of the free utility world.


~ Posted at June 11, 2003 01:19 PM | Comment Permalink
Brian said: Total comments: 3  

Actually I very rarely have permalink trouble...you just have to remember to republish your archives. There are annoying aspects to Blogger, but my grad student budget doesn't think they're worth $75 a year to avoid. Blogger has been busy moving to a new server, which has caused some disruption but is supposed to fix some problems.

~ Posted at June 11, 2003 01:53 PM | Comment Permalink
moderator Al-Munaqabah said: Total comments: 996   gold stargold stargold stargold stargold star

If you really think that having to republish all your archives every time you post just to have working permalinks is worth the trouble, then you're welcome to stay with Blogger.

However, for people who would like to post and go, I would strongly recommend that they leave Blogger. When I first started blogging a year ago I used Blogger. Blogger had these same problems back then. After a couple of months I switched to MT and I have never looked back. The Blogger templates are just as "cookie cutter" as the default MT templates, but MT offers a lot more flexibility than Blogger in terms of how you can display your blog posts. You don't know what you're missing. You really don't. Or if you really dislike MT for some strange reason, try PMachine or some other blogging system. In my opinion, MT is the best blogging system out there today, but I'm willing to admit that I'm biased. However, there should be no question that Blogger sucks. The only question is whether Blogger sucks enough that it's no longer worth using.

Loyalty is all well and good but there comes a time when for your own sake and for the sake of your readers you need to use a blogging system that's reliable, even if you have to pay $75 a year. I too am on a very tight budget, but I find that the money is well-spent.

~ Posted at June 11, 2003 02:14 PM | Comment Permalink
Plucky Punk said: Total comments: 1  

I've been thinking about MT for awhile. Does it allow you to blog from any computer with internet access? Or is it software you have to download? I do most of my blogging from work, and we're not allowed to download software onto those computers.

~ Posted at June 11, 2003 06:00 PM | Comment Permalink
moderator Al-Munaqabah said: Total comments: 996   gold stargold stargold stargold stargold star

Yes, it's web accessible. I frequently blog from school. Just sit down in the computer lab and bring up the directory on my website where I have MT installed.

If you're willing to wait, the MT people are coming out with TypePad, which will be sort of like Blogger Pro on Blogspot. You don't need to get your own webserver space or install the blogging software.

It was Blogger's problems that drove me to look for new blogging software, but it's MT's features that keep me using it. smile

~ Posted at June 11, 2003 07:20 PM | Comment Permalink
Plucky Punk said: Total comments: 1  

That sounds interesing....thanks!

~ Posted at June 11, 2003 11:42 PM | Comment Permalink
incorrigible said: Total comments: 1  

Did you see this update to the Florida driving license case?
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/sultaana1.html

~ Posted at June 12, 2003 02:35 PM | Comment Permalink

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