It’s Time

If this space seems silent (more than usual) than it’s because I have been spending countless hours, and maybe even an all-nighter, these past couple of weeks migrating my blog (with the help of my brother) to a new domain name, powered by a different blogging engine.

This site was first created as our wedding info site! I chose this platform because I needed to quickly create a website, not necessarily because I intended to blog in this space. (At the time I was still sporadically posting on LiveJournal…remember that?) In fact, after blogging so long on LJ I wasn’t sure I would ever really want to blog regularly again.

Over time I started posting more and more here — at first just photographs, then a few of our trips, then all the stuff in between. I met a lot of friends, connected with a lot of people I wouldn’t have met otherwise, and kept in touch with friends and family. I remembered why I enjoyed blogging. I loved keeping tabs on our life, moments I would have otherwise long forgotten.

The more I blogged, the more I wished for certain features — things that were either slow to be adapted by my current blog platform or things that are still currently on a wish list. I was able to insert my own messy code to get add some of the features that I wanted but knowing that I didn’t have a clean site has always bothered that obsessive part of my brain. Most recently, and as mentioned in my previous post, my current platform went through a major upgrade thereby messing up a lot of the simple blogging functionality. And while the upgrades mainly benefited users interested in creating things like shop pages, it made things worse for bloggers. Or at least for me. The past couple of weeks I have worked on ONE post — the previous post — because so many things were broken, wouldn’t publish, would rearrange when publishing, were uneditable, etc. I tried everything — trying their recently updated templates, switching back to the old interface, contacting customer service, reading through countless support logs. Some things I could fix but I realized that at some point the template I was currently on would be phased out, and that the more time passed, the harder it would be to get away with my crap code overrides (and also the less likely I would want to keep doing them). I debated back and forth if I should just stay put or if I should bite the bullet and start over on a new platform.

In the meantime, I realized I had another domain registered — a place where I used to post about a super 8 film project I was working on at the time. I started experimenting with building a shadow site under this domain name using a different blogging platform. I didn’t fully intend to switch over, and I certainly did not want to go through the trouble of migrating, but over time I realized that for blogging purposes, the new blogging platform had a lot of functionality that my current site does not have. A lot of the problems I had issue with on this platform have since been resolved but since visiting the other side I realized that a different platform better suits my needs.

Beyond the hassle of migrating (another reason for migrating is that my current platform does not make it easy to save/export my blog), I have mixed feelings about changing names, platforms, sites, etc. Up until now I have had a great experience with using my current blogging platform, and annoyances aside, it will be weird thinking of this space going silent. I’m not sure if, once migrated, I will let this site die or if I will keep it running. Since it was our wedding site, I have something of a sentimental attachment to this space. On the other hand, I’m excited to get going on the new site — there are a lot of updates that I love and am excited to use!

TL;DR: “Pardon the dust,” this blog will soon be moving to a new domain name sometime in the very near future. I will update with all the new info once I get the new site in reasonable shape.