Just got a message from Google today that they'll be discontinuing their FTP service as of March 26th. Which means that I'll no longer be able to publish the Subway Rambler to my own site folder. I can switch to their host, or something they call 'custom domains,' which I haven't yet looked into because something about the name sounds depressing to me - like they know it's a fairly lame service so they gave it a sweet-sounding name to candy it up a little.
The main selling point with Blogger, as far as I'm concerned, was the ability to host it on the main Copper Man site. Google claims only 1/2 of 1% of Blogger users use the FTP feature, a figure I don't believe at all and yet have to assume is true. If it is true, it's partly because they don't make it easy to use the FTP publisher, or even to find it. One more part of the increasingly annoying Google service based on their economy of free is the sheer opacity of navigating the help directory or even finding out about their tools searching elsewhere on the internet. As much as I've enjoyed digging around and solving problems on Blogger, I'll admit that pretty much every solution I've come up with to meet my needs has been very much one of the spit-and-sealing-wax variety, and I'm kind of tired of having the seams showing.
So, the big question: do I use this opportunity to switch the Rambler to WordPress? There are apparently WordPress tools that migrate the site seamlessly, but I've also got 715 entries (nearly three years' worth by the deadline), and I'll become positively apoplectic if I lost them. But the fact is that I've been needing to learn WordPress for a while (and Joomla, if I can ever bring myself to), and this may be the writing on the wall for me and Google, which is a company I've grown daily less fond of.
Perhaps the main reason why only .005 of all Blogger users use the FTP feature is that those who have the skills to work it out just go ahead and use WordPress instead, because it's better.
One thing's for sure: time to break out the printer and get a hard copy of all this. Ugh.
D.
5 comments:
You really don't want to print that.
You're right that I don't want to, but when I randomly surf through entries, I'm sometimes surprised how strong some of them are. Only a small percentage, true, but even if it were 10%, that still comes to 70 entries.
That aside, there's also the diary function of the Rambler, and the point of a diary (to me, at any rate) is to look back after time has passed to see what was up on such and such a date. I don't want Blogger to eat my past.
I'll probably leave out the graphics...
D.
Think youre screwed on this one.. This is why you cant depend on a system like this..
Youve got to host this yourself on your own server..
I've been trying to think of how you can save this.. I'd need more details.
Google obviously wants me to switch over to their server, but I know there are some technical problems that crop up with that. Kills the search feature dead, which means that three years worth of blog entries will be impossible to sort through.
I've seen mentions of WordPress porters, and that may be the way to go.
D.
Here's the Blogger/FTP announcement, if you like.
http://buzz.blogger.com/2010/01/important-note-to-ftp-users.html
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