Like many ham radio blogs, this one uses Google's Blogger. Unlike most ham radio blogs, this one is hosted on my own web server (well, not really my own web server, just some cheap shared web hosting that I already had for my G4ILO's Shack website.) I use Blogger's FTP option to upload my blog pages to my server. I made that decision when I started this blog simply because I already had a website and server and I thought it would help improve my site's popularity to have the blog pages under my g4ilo.com domain instead of Blogger's. Plus any add-in service that works on a per domain basis such as the ClustrMaps visitor tracker or Ham Banner Exchange works for the whole site, including the blog.
There have been times when I cursed this decision, notably during the occasions when Blogger's FTP uploading didn't work. Also, this is becoming a pretty big blog and any update that affects all the pages means the entire blog has to be re-uploaded, which can take a long time. But I really felt that I had passed the point of no return for changing this decision as my blog now consisted of too many pages and I couldn't see how to switch without losing all my existing content, or at least breaking all the links.
Blogger has now given me notice that they are going to shut down their FTP service on March 26, so I now have no choice. I will not for much longer be able to continue publishing my blog on this site. The email claims that Blogger is developing a tool that will handle redirecting traffic from the old URL to the new URL which will handle "the vast majority of situations." But it would not surprise me at all to discover that one of the situations it will not handle is that where a blog shares a domain with a website running under a content management system that already uses a complicated .htaccess script to create virtual web pages from a CMS database.
This looks like one of those situations where if that's where I have to get to, it would be better not to start from here. I don't like messy solutions, so leaving the existing blog pages as a kind of historical archive and starting afresh isn't an option. There are a couple of ham bloggers (you know who you are) who still have pages from earlier attempts online (and even one or two who appear to have two different blogs containing many of the same posts) and it's confusing when you fetch up at some of those pages and find they don't link to any recent content. So if I have to start over, it really will be a clean, fresh start. Though at the moment the thought of junking over 300 pages makes me wonder why I bother at all.
Until I know where I am going with this, there seems little point in adding more content to the existing blog. If anyone reading this has already done what Google is forcing me to do and could help me do it without waiting to see what tools they can come up with and whether they will work then I would welcome your assistance or advice.
Julian....I'd be depressed if you didn't post your radio stuff anymore.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm confusing the issue (don't know about all the things you mention in the post). Keep us all posted on the changes.
John
Yeah, well it all depends on how Blogger plans to migrate the FTP blogs like mine. They've dropped the bombshell on us but the tools aren't ready yet so no-one can see how well they will work. So until them I'm in a kind of limbo not sure whether I'll be able to transfer everything easily or whether the only practical option is to start over from scratch.
ReplyDeleteHi Julian, The reason I have my blog hosted on two different services is due to the sort of thing you describe. There you are going along happily doing your thing and then they move the goalposts. Hopefully if Blogger becomes unavailable I can migrate the one on Wordpress to a new host or vice versa. I don't use the FTP tool myself and edit everything on line. It can be a simple cut and paste from something done off line so it does not have to be any more difficult than an FTP up-load.
ReplyDeleteHope it all keeps going.
73 Steve
Why does everything change? Are you just used to it than they put an end to it. Similarly Haloscan stopped. Hundreds of responses are going to be lost. I am also afraid that Youtube one day will stop their service and then I lost all my movies. Anyway, you can start a new blog at blogger (or Wordpress, also a free service) and then link to that blog through a link. Or put in the menu of your website a script by referring to your blog. Anyway, you need a solution. I hope you get good advice from clever blog readers. Good luck, 73 Paul
ReplyDeleteJulian,
ReplyDeleteI'm in the same boat with you concerning having to migrate my blog (www.brianjester.us), I love Blogger (except it looks terrible on an iPod), and have to find a way to host my FPT blog hosted on GoDaddy with another blogging scheme.
You could look at serendipity at:
http://www.s9y.org/
It's a PHP blog that requires Apache & mySQL.
In the past I used SPB (Simple PHP Blog), and it uses flat files. Here's the URL:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sphpblog/
And here's an older part of my websire that still has old SPB pages, so you can see how it looks:
http://www.brianjester.us/blog/
Brian
KB8UIP & VE3SPG
KEEP you old FTP service using this script:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.documentroot.com/2010/03/how-to-fix-bloggers-ftp-bug.html
if you can't run it let me know and i'll run it for you.