New England Lighthouse Blog has Sailed to the New World of WordPress!
As some Blogging Buddies may have heard through the Blogging vine, Debbie Dolphin has strapped on her Life Preserver and dived off the Blogger Boat. A Dolphin needs a Life Preserver? With several Blogger burdens, Debbie Dolphin barely managed to keep my bottlenose above water!
Fortunately, there was a Brighter Beacon shining a Light across a Harbor of Hope located in the crystal clear refreshing waters of the WordPress Blogging Bay for us!
Welcome to our Lighthouse adventures at New England Lighthouse Treasures! For a Blogging Beacon shining a Light on current Lighthouse news or travel tips, please bookmark or subscribe to New England Lighthouse Treasures.
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Some of the free migraines of Blogger that excedrin couldn’t heal:
1. Invalid XHTML and visitor complaints about my Blog not loading,
2. RSS Feed issues,
3. Blogger loads at least twice as slow as WordPress,
4. Searching online endlessly to find how to fix HTML code after changing Templates,
5. Poor Archive Navigation (mainly broken Links), and
6. OpenID Issues.
After the stress of OpenID commenting last week, Debbie Dolphin was immeasurably helped by Blog Bloke with his WordPress Hosting tips and WordPress guidance this week. In recognition of Bloke’s dedication to helping his fellow Bloggers, Captain Debbie Dolphin is honoring Blog Bloke with the following well deserved award,
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December 16th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Congratulations on your move.
Hmmm. I see you removed my links from your blogroll. Any particular reason?
December 16th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Looks like the move went smoothly! I like the layout - very clean!
December 16th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Thank you, Sue!
Actually, your link wasn’t removed - I’m in the process of completing the transition of redirecting post links to this blog. The Blogroll was not completed because of redirection issues.
You caught me before the move was completed. Your links will be added some time today!
December 16th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Thank you, Kathy!
I hope everyone likes the Lighthouse layout? Hopefully, this layout is like a beam of light shining forth Lighthouse posts from the harbor of darkness!
There was slight learning curve to jump from Blogger to WordPress.com followed by another jump from WordPress.com to this domain. Overall, the move was fairly smooth in under seven days thanks to a great support team providing the right directions.
December 17th, 2007 at 12:56 am
lovely Debbie…just lovely !!!!!
Congratulations on your move….
I will pop back to my place and add your new link….
oh and I just realised …all that work for openid….but I suppose you can still use it to visit us humble blogspot bloggers….
December 17th, 2007 at 3:59 am
I think the new blog looks great and thanks for the kudos Debbie. What I like most is I didn’t even have to fiddle with OpenID to leave a comment ;-).
Cheers!
…BB
December 17th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
The site looks great. It’s so nice to not have to look at that old Blogger lighthouse template that everyone seemed to use.
Just a suggestion here. You might want to set up a permanent redirect. I manually edited my latest post where I linked to you, because I got a 404 error when I checked it. But others might not know.
There’s a great plugin available for people moving their sites. I’m using it since I changed permalink structure. It’s at http://www.microkid.net/wordpress/permalinks-moved-permanently/
That’s what I like about WordPress. You can find a plugin for almost everything, and it makes it easy to add features.
December 17th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Thank you, Kim!
I have a feeling with OpenID issues and Technorati Troubles, you may be diving from the humble Blogspot Blogger boat soon to become a full-time WordPress Blogger?
Speaking of OpenID issues, Blogger refuses to accept Wordpress OpenID links from independent domains. I need to log into my old humble Blogger account to post a comment at Blogger Blogs and add my signature link to my WordPress Blog. Who said the free Blogger Blogspot services are easy?
Debbie
December 17th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
You are most welcome, Bloke!
Thank you for your great review and thankfully with your advice and help, I am no longer a deeply frustrated Blogger!
December 17th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Thank you, Sue for your great review!
The old Blogger Lighthouse template was duplicated too often and used by several Blogs publishing posts with no Lighthouse content!
For reasons unknown, the Blogger redirects to my WordPress are not 100% for every link post yet. Link redirects were easy to setup once you understand the WordPress Permalink code yet, spot checks reveal Google has not fully caught up with every post link redirect!
Hopefully, this is a timing issue with the Googlebot? Google is slowly sending eMail pingbacks on my posts that were Permalinked.
If the problem continues, the Plug-in might be a way to trouble shoot any Permalink problems?
December 17th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
I should have suspected Google. I manually edited the links to the most recent posts of yours I linked to, since I still see people click on them to check yours out.
Anyway, good luck, if you need any help with the site just holler. But it looks so great now, I doubt if you’ll need any more help.
December 18th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
haha Debbie …I think it will take quite a bit of pushing to get me over to WP just when I’m starting to enjoy Blogger
Sue has done the WP ID domain thing with her blog…I’m sure she can give you the rundown
December 19th, 2007 at 1:03 am
Hi Kim,
No pushing off the plank of the Blogger Boat from me! And, I will not be surprised to be redirected from your laketress Blogger Blog sometime in the future.
To answer the burning question “Why did you fall off the plank of the Blogger Boat?”, only some of my reasons for jumping ship were listed in this post. There is no simple way to list and explain all the benefits of WordPress in one Post!
If I may illustrate with these three important key benefits:
1) Valid XHTML means a WordPress Blog will load the way you designed it in all major browsers. A invalid Blogger XHTML may not load at all which is one way to lose new readers before they even read your content!
2) With one click, all WordPress Blog posts and comments can be backed up to your hard drive and then saved to a CD. With one click, the WordPress Blog can be restored if the host server crashes. Blogger lacks a one click backup and restore feature. If the Blogger host goes down with ship than Blogger post authors have to manually restore every post content including pictures, artwork, and video. This may not be a major issue for a blog with 25 posts yet, a blog with over 100 posts could take weeks to restore. And, the Blogger comments are lost forever unless you copy each comment to another file!
3) Wordpress pingbacks reveals who has linked to any of your posts without worrying about Technorati Troubles!
______________________
Sue has done the WP ID domain thing with her blog…. Couldn’t find Sue’s link for the rundown.
December 21st, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Hi Debbie,
(you’re right, nothing beats stumbling upon a blog by direct comment redirection… that’s how I got here)
Have you tried this: If you ‘delegate’ your wp-url to your OpenID, blogger will accept that in the pul down option “Any OpenID”. That way, you might be able to comment on Blogger/Blogspot blogs using your OpenID with a direct hyperlink to your blogs url as your commentors name. Maybe my post about delegating might help? I am not sure that this will work, but maybe it’s worth the try?
For my upcoming Present Ration: I have updated the Colin-Extra Christmas (Link)Love List with your new url, so I’m safe now?
Thanks for stopping by - I love the connection you made between my proposed F-U Technorati Index and their WTF! Lol!
-Jos
December 21st, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Hi Jos,
Tis the season of some cool comical comments!
Your Link Surprise is safe with me! Hopefully, Google’s irrelevant Present Ration (PR) will not affect us?
Thank you for the OpenID tip and your welcome (Ref: Thanks for stopping by). In the future, don’t be too surprised if you see me surfing into your Blogging harbor!
With the stress of holiday preparations, setting up a new blog, etc., there has been no time to check if OpenID delegation works for WordPress . Apparently, I need to upload a OpenID Delegate WordPress Plugin, activate the Plugin and enter a OpenID Server Url, OpenID Delegate Server URL, and XRDS Url.
For now, signing into Blogger and adding the correct signature link seems easier than dealing with another OpenID migraine mess again (first fixed my Blogger Blog only to discover WordPress OpenID is not 100% compatible with Blogger).
Happy Holidays,
Debbie
December 22nd, 2007 at 4:44 am
Hi Debbie,
The Plugin thing… ermm… that’s why I am not so much impressed with WordPress myself. I have a (backup) blog on free hosted WordPress, one blog on a (paid) OEM-version of TypePad/SixApart and a few blogs on free Blogger. If I compare the WP with what free Blogger offers (and I think it is only fair to compare a free gift with another free gift), to me WP looks rather inflexible.
In the free WP blog, I cannot simply and quickly add a few lines of Javascript or HTML and -hey presto- create a sidebar widget, for example. And, heck, I cannot even modify the template!
It’s a pity that Blogger/Blogspot aren’t offering a paid upgrade version that would offer a/o the other benefits of WP, such as decent support, backup facilities, a decent and flexible commenting system, more flexibility with sizing and editing images, more flexibility when self-hosting the blog, and some cures against your listed migraine issues.
Anyway, in an ideal world, etc.
Thanks for sailing by again, and good luck with your preparations.
I have added lighthousestars to my Personal Favorites blogroll page, and, the quick judge of character that I am, I have added you to the list of recipients of the NoDirectOn (not: NoDirection) Cool and Crazy award label.
Happy Holidays!
December 22nd, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Hi Jos,
In the category of fairly comparing free gifts, you are right, free Blogger wins hands down over free WordPress.com. Unfortunately, WordPress.org or WordPress.net does not allow Blogger posts to be directly imported to a self-hosted WordPress Blog.
To get beyond that minor irritation, a inflexible WordPress.com Blog was created to automatically import Blogger Posts which can be exported to the final WordPress.net Blog. Another unexpected hoop to jump through in order to regain HTML flexibility.
WP Plugins are another strange Blogging pill to cure some WordPress ills! For example, there is a Permalinks Plugin that helps with the redirection of Blogger Post Links. Yet, one line of code can be added to the Permalinks option in the WordPress Dashboard.
Although I am no WordPress Plugin expert, seems like Plugins were designed to add functions to a WP template bypassing the need to learn and/or change the HTML and/or PHP code. Perhaps, in a ideal world Plugins might be completely trusted? Like Widgets, the Less Plugins is More! Javascript Widgets slow down the loading of any blog or web page and hopefully, most people who visit blogs are reading our content only. After reviewing the load time of Blogger Widgets, all widgets were removed because a Blog with 8 widgets loads about 8 times slower than a Blog with no Widgets!
“It’s a pity that Blogger/Blogspot aren’t offering a paid upgrade version…” Amen!!! If Google offered these WP benefits, former Google Bloggers may never have dived off the Blogger Boat!
In my humble opinion, the best features of both Blogging Platforms should be combined instead of the current digital religious war of Blogger versus WordPress!
Speaking of Blogging issues, both WordPress and Blogspot Themes written by other authors can be a Bloggers nightmare searching for the code needed to be changed in order to personalize the author’s Theme to their Blog Theme. Theme authors could very easily identify which code parts are associated with the Blog layout.
The Header image for this blog is a good example: changing the CSS file did not work to set the top margin of the image. The Header image was also located in the Header.php file and changing that file did not help either. My final solution was to add the top margin to the image file which cropped the bottom of the Lighthouse slightly.
Believe it or not, your Cool and Crazy award has left me without a prepared long acceptance speech! No doubt, the Blogging Academy Awards is ecstatic to hear me say this? I am honored to receive this cool award from a Brilliant Blogger!
Thank you for your holiday gifts, Jos!
I placed your present under my Comic Comfort Blogroll tree
and Google can’t take it away from me!
Happy Holidays!
December 22nd, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Hi Debbie,
That would be the “Bloscar”.. lol!
I am happy you graciously accepted the award — kinda proves that I was right
And those speeches, well, all they do is thank their mom and dad for supporting them in their pursuit of a career anyway — which would maybe have left your parents wondering where they went wrong, in this case
Welcome to the Club! Sorry there’s no red carpet..
December 22nd, 2007 at 5:42 pm
To receive a Blogging Bloscar, do I need a special waiver from the Writers Strike?
ROFL
December 22nd, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Heck, no! (as long as you stick to your wordless acceptance speech)
December 23rd, 2007 at 8:19 am
My first serious comment in a long while:
I just noticed that Blogger/Blogspot have returned on some of their steps and are now re-introducing the option to leave a link to your name: with the “nickname” option there now is an extra field to leave your URL.
It’s not rolled out for all blogs yet, apparently, but I have seen it somewhere already. See You Blog We Listen for more info.
-Jos
December 23rd, 2007 at 11:50 am
Holy Mackerel, Jos!
Looks like your OpenIDiot identification system idea brought about a positive(?) change at Google!
If Google’s step backwards works for comments than our PR (Present Ration) spoofing campaign might fix their bogus PR system, too?
December 23rd, 2007 at 4:22 pm
ooh Word Press sounds hard….
I’m wondering if it’s possible to turn my website at http://www.laketrees1.com (my own domain) into a blog…..the only hiccup I see is the commenting system and can I bypass both blogger and wordpress….
I see that you and Jos are pretty expert in this area….so you might be able give me some advice…I think I definitely have to pare down my sidebar though as I know Alexa says that my blog is in the 99% slowest loading blogs…I think the time has come to check my blogrolls…
December 23rd, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Like you (if I read your question mark correctly) I am not at all sure that it is a positive change…
Surely, it’s positive in a way (and in my view a first) that they have listened to the gazillions of complaints they got over this.
But on the other hand, I would personally rather have everybody use some ‘checkable’ ID — I hate spammers, and I hate having to check if a comment link is actually spam, even more.
So I assume that The Blogger Team are deeply frustrated by this. They probably feel like they were trying to do good - and then “these dumb users” wouldn’t understand their beautiful goal.
In the end, I fear this may lead into an even more arrogant (”why bother about our users, cause they’re dummies anyway”) attitude at Bloggers’ Development Team.
P.S.: Kim mentioned you are producing a Movie? I don’t seem to be able to find it, can you ‘direct’ me to it? I am really curious..
P.P.S: Seeing the current paranoia - and growing- among MBL-users, it might be a good idea if communities like that would also use some OpenID kind of security when people join or log in, wouldn’t you agree?
December 23rd, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Hi Kim,
Please don’t make any quick decisions! The key to moving from Blogger to WordPress is to keep Blogger Active and add new posts while becoming acquainted with the features and operation of WordPress in the background at your pace.
There is no easy answer to say whether WordPress is hard or easy for you. Writing and Editing Posts in WordPress is probably 20 times easier than Blogger! But, setting up WordPress can be easy or hard depending on which Blog Template you select to use and/or how much you want to personalize the Template to your design desires.
If you can live with one of free WordPress.com Templates that can not be changed than a free WordPress.com Blog is super easy to setup.
Perhaps, the best approach would be to let me or Jos know in general what features you need to have in a new Blog and your HTML knowledge to give us some idea of how to help you!
Seems like the http://www.laketrees1.com/ website needs some type of Blogging software to support comments and other Blog features. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any Blogging software for Websites ~ maybe, Jos has some ideas.
Generally speaking, blogs and website are slowed down by a lot of images or a few very large images. If the size of your Blog including images, text content, and Blogroll Links, is 60 Kb to 70 Kb, you will be in the top fastest loading pages.
December 23rd, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Hi Jos
You read my question mark correctly!
There are so many issues with Google’s comment system… where do we begin?
Maybe, proposing a solution is the best way to go?
Perhaps, if Google paid WordPress a royalty to use their comment system than Spam Links (by enabling the Akismet Plugin) would be eliminated and nobody would need to worry about which option they need to use when posting a comment.
Moderated comments would be enabled only to alert the Blog author that someone has paged them for a comment conversation like I do at my Blog!
P.S. Kim let the cat of the bag too early since we need to write the Movie that you, Kim, and I will produce! Did we surprise you? More info in the comments @ http://lighthousestars.com/2007/12/alcatraz-island-lighthouse-shines-a-beam-of-gold.html
and
http://lighthousestars.com/2007/12/owls-head-lighthouse-license-shines-bright.html
as a ongoing production of the You Crack Me Up Company (Hopefully, this is not another one of my comical misunderstandings, Kim?) !!!
P.P.S. I am not fully up to speed with the current MBL security leaks yet, I have had my share of bizarre issues dealing with MBL and my initial impression is Yahoo would screw up OpenIDiot security measures, too!
December 23rd, 2007 at 9:28 pm
ah yes Debbie
I have a blog at WP for my artgallery called get painted !!!
I haven’t spent much time with it….
I use publisher with my website and publish it through my provider which can be a pain…
images are a worry for me being an artist…perhaps thumbnails with external links may work
I have dreamweaver installed on my computer…but I’m too scared to touch it …hehehehe
any offers on a crash course in dreamweaver ?
oops I forgot that the producers have to be kept in the dark…
oh ohhh….I think Jos has decided to play Sylvester Stallone already !!!
December 23rd, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Hi Kim,
No matter which Blog (Blogger or WordPress) you decide to use, thumbnails are a good idea with a link to the full size image at a free Photo Web-site like Flickr.
For a example, please visit my Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse Open House post.
To create thumbnails, I use Photoshop which has a menu option named “Image Size.”
My guess is Dreamweaver has the same option? Load your image file, select the “Image Size” option, enter the new thumbnail size, press the “make” change (or similar text) button, and rename the resized file before saving it (otherwise, you overwrite your original file) to your hard drive.
Can’t wait to see Jos spoof the role of Rocky Balboa!
December 23rd, 2007 at 10:33 pm
wow Debbie
gorgeous photos….you have great perspective in them …
and the composition and colours are excellent…
this looks like a great idea to present photos….
I will check out flickr too ..I think I have an account there ..I use Photo bucket a lot but it is very slow…
haha Jos as a nordic Rocky…that I’m looking forward to !!
ps
I have dreamweaver installed…but have no idea how to use it …as I heard somewhere that it takes years to learn how to use it
December 24th, 2007 at 12:12 am
Thank you, Kim!
Flickr also has the benefit of using your MBL password, too!
Wait a minute, the MBL password may not be a benefit?
We need to check with H. Mackerel, Sr. for a MBL security check on MBL security risks!
P.S. never used Dreamweaver and looks like iMac users are experiencing problems with Dreamweaver 8.
If you use a Mac or iMac than GraphicConverter X 6.0.3 is a fairly easy image editing program to learn. Also, GraphicConverter X is Shareware, try before you buy which is another nice feature.
December 24th, 2007 at 2:54 am
ok I’ll wait for the go ahead on flickr Debbie
:)
I have an IBM and all I use dreamweaver for is when I back up my blogs…
the code goes in there and very occasionally I look at it …study it and put it in the too hard basket hehehe…
well it’s christmas eve here …and I have dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow with “the family”….
so I’ll sign off …
have a lovely Christmas and tell Jos to lay off the mackerals til after Christmas
ps I have tentatively renamed the technorati post …this is what happens when Technorati turns the eye on you ….AKA Blogger Asylum for Technorati rejects…previously called YCMU CO PTY LTD
I really think we can integrate the tech post in with the Rock movie post….that way we’ll have a block buster on our hands….
PS if any calls me stark raving crazy ….you know I will blame you two…
it all started when I got that crazy and cool Bloscar…..from you know who ?
no wonder they call this the silly season !!!
December 24th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Kim, you may want to take a look at the TypePad blogging platform. I am using an OEM version for one of my Dutch Language marketing blogs, and this has a great option that creates thumbnails and at the same time stores the large images in the blogs storage space. (it has - of course, of course - some negatives as a blogging system as well, but it might be something you like)
December 24th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Holy Mackeral, Kim!
What will Jos do to replace his Christmas mackerals?
PCs have never worked well for me! - spent more time restoring the system after programs crashed and hardly any time using the programs.
If Apple did not create a reliable computer, we would have never met!
Seems like your Technorati post is the foundation of our secret Book and Movie script!
It has been a unforgettable Christmas season so far and we wish you and your family a Happy healthy Holiday Season and fun healthy prosperous New Year!
December 24th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Hi Jos,
Kim, Jos’ Typepad Marketing Link is http://marketingreview.web-log.nl/
And, is the setup and use of TypePad similar to Blogger?
December 25th, 2007 at 9:39 am
[just quickly in between two bites of laid off fish] just take a look here. I am not in any way trying to sell it to you or anybody, but it’s really nice.
Not so much the low-price OEM version that I have for 1 of my blogs right now (that is a bit of a stripped version), I am reffering to the full (premium) version. If I ever decide to take my blogs to privately hosted domain, I will probably move all of them to that (paid) version of TypePad.
PS: I use both apple and pc, and since I installed Firefox on the pc, I have had no more problems
December 25th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Hi Jos,
Two bites of laid-off fish…serves the fish right for losing their day job and taking your bait!
In my humble opinion, checking out a free trial of any Blogging Platform is a wise approach to check which one best meets your needs. 10 to 1 if you like the free version than you will love the paid version! Kim, you may want to read the Typepad features, too.
PS. To H. Mackerel, Sr., I always seem to “flounder” when using a PC!
But, I do use Firefox on a PC to check and compare the format of my Blog and Web-site with success.
December 26th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
hey thanks guys….
this information will be a great help….
will type more of a response when I get my arm back in order
December 26th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Hi Kim,
You are most welcome!
April 30th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Jessie…
To all the uninitiated out there - read this and take heed. This is good stuff. Thanks….
May 29th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Nathalie…
One notable blogging tool that does not support trackback yet is Blogger.It has since been implemented in most other blogging tools….
May 29th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Hi Nathalie,
Another great reason to start or switch to WordPress!
Trackbacks may very well improve the Search Engine Rankings of WordPress Blogs and other blogging platforms that support trackbacks, too?
Debbie Dolphin’s last blog post..Canadian Lighthouse Heritage Protection Act