Moving Blogger Blog to WordPress

This Travelogue and a not so active travel guide are the only parts of Vagabond Journey.com that are still published using Blogger technology. I publish both of these blogs to my own server — I don’t use the blogspot.com server — and this system has always been a little clunky.

I like Blogger, I like the way this travelogue looks and functions . . . but it just does not work.

For the past month I have been struggling with the problem of trying to update the template on older pages. There are 880 entries on this travelogue, and I can only make template changes on roughly 10% of them. Even new comments on older pages do not show up.

I put up with this problem for over a month. It is a Blogger problem, as the information that I publish is sent from my computer through Blogger and on to my server. My server is fine. My computer is fine. It is the Blogger middleman that is not functioning properly. I need to be able to update old pages in bulk. This was once done automatically by pushing a button titled, “republish entire blog.”

This worked fine (or almost fine) for over a year. Now it has conked out. Perhaps this travelogue is too large to republish in full?

I don’t know.

But I have been turning over some rocks in search of some answers . . . and have found none.

Now, it has come to my attention that new comments on recently published pages are not publishing.

This is a little too much. If a reader is going to take the time to comment, then these comments must be published. I know that I would be pissed if I put a good chunk of my time into writing a comment on someone else’s blog just to have it mysteriously dissappear.

Blogger is designed to be run off of the Blogspot servers — and it runs well if you publish to blogspot.com. It is my impression that the system only grudgingly allows for publishing on independent servers, and not a lot of resources are put into making this type of publishing run smoothly. In effect, Blogger has fallen way behind the times.

WordPress and other blogging platforms are designed for publishing on independent servers — which is essential to run a professional site — and they are running fast into the future, ever advancing and engineering better blogging tools.

Blogger is behind the times. This is a shame, as Blogger is otherwise excellent.

Tonight — July 7, 2009 — the Vagabond Journey travelogue will attempt to completely migrate over to WordPress. For any business to remain competative, they need to constantly morph themselves to mirror their times and context.