8 Reasons Why I Switched from Wordpress.org to Blogger.

    You read it right. Do a google search and there are hundreds (if not thousand) of results instructing you on how to move to wordpress from blogger and why it is a great idea. But, there are really very few who want otherwise.
    When I started my blog, I searched for the best blogging platform in Google, the top choice in many results was Wordpress.org (the self hosted one). Even Google’s own Blogger was a second or third choice. So I bought a domain and  started my blog with wordpress. Everything was going fine until one day I was forced to think of alternatives. My web host deleted my hosting account and my blog was homeless for more than two weeks. It is then I started to think of moving out from Wordpress because of the reasons below.

1.  I had no option.
    Well, it’s not entirely true. I was unable to get a reliable free hosting service that would provide me some descent space to install wordpress, allow me to use my own domain and doesn’t force their ads on my site. Alternatively, I could pay for hosting, but paying approx INR 6600 ($101) every year just to host the blog was a bit too much for me.

2.  Blogger is free.
    There is no hosting charges, Blogger hosts your text, image and video without imposing a limit on it. This was a really incredible deal for me. No self-hosting also means, there is no maintenance of your hosting account, no downtime nightmares, no security issues to worry about. Blogger takes care of them all, for free.

3.  Zero learning curve
    Though I had a blogger account from the day I had the gmail account, I never really used it. but I was surprised to see how easy it is to learn and use. You can get started within minutes. It took me days (if not weeks) to get comfortable with wordpress admin panel. Here, you just select a template and start blogging.

4.  Lets you use your own domain
    The great thing about having your own domain is, you never really lose all your traffic in case you change your platform. And Blogger lets you have your own domain without asking a penny. Though https is not available with a custom domain, you can easily get that free if you are using cloudflare. If you are not using cloudflare, you  are stupid.

5.  A decent collection of templates and widgets.
    Though you may miss the huge template and plugin collection of Wordpress, there are really nice professional looking templates for blogger available for free. You will also find a great many third party widgets to do neat tricks (like adding an html sitemap) with your blogger blog.

6. You really don’t need so much features.
    Wordpress is no longer just a blogging platform. It’s a complete CMS in itself having features to make any kind of websites, from simple port folios to complex shopping carts. But with all it’s bells and whistles, sometimes, it feels a bit of a overkill for a blog.
    Blogger has just enough options to write and edit posts or pages, manage your comments, check your stats, tinker with the design and do a bit of administrative settings. It also has Adsense integrated for monetisation. Sometimes, simple is elegant.

7.  Policy limitations.
    Though it may not affect most people, but most webhosts have a strict policy guideline of what your website can and cannot contain and there are very few languages that are acceptable. Blogger content policy is a lot less relaxed there. You can write about almost anything in almost any language.

8.  It is there to stay.
    Contrary to popular opinion, that Google may anytime shut the Blogger service down, I feel just the opposite. Because the bulk of Google’s revenue comes from its proprietary advertising service and to place ads you need content. And Blogger is a huge source of content. With adsense being preferred method of monetisation for most bloggers, Google really wouldn’t want to miss that revenue source.

    All being said, I also ran into my share of hiccups while migrating to blogger. So do note these if you are also planning the same.

1.  No easy way to migrate hosted media
    You can export your database in sql format and then convert it to blogger compatible xml format using this tool online. Huge thanks to Google for the code and to the person who made that app. This guide from livewire helped a lot.
    However, links to all the images, videos or other files that you uploaded for your wordpress site will still point to the old site and those links will be broken once you point your domain to Blogger. You have to manually upload the files and update the links in your posts. Not difficult but boring

2. Messed up permalinks
    If you are a fan of Wordpress permalinks, you’ll miss the flexibility here. The permalinks take a fixed structure of  http://Your_URL/YYYY/MM/your-post-name.html. If you are using any other format then, you’ll lose some traffic. You may reclaim some of the traffic from Google if you have webmaster tools enabled for your site. You will also have to fix your internal links in each post manually for the same reason.
    To my insane luck, I had exactly the same structure in wordpress. So not an issue there.

    Overall, as I continue to work with my blog in Blogger, it continues to amaze me with some nifty feature or trick, that I earlier thought was not possible with Blogger.

    I hope this helps you decide if you really want wordpress for your blog or Blogger is more than enough. If you are new to blogging, I would strongly suggest to start with blogger. You can always migrate to wordpress easily when you make it big.
    Do let me know your thoughts on this.

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My Homeless Blog

    Well, last few weeks had been pretty interesting if I may say so. To be more precise, it was a combination of frustration, depression, annoyance and a little amazement too. And all thanks to my blog(s).
    In the beginning of this month, the web host, where I had my blog, deleted my account and all the files associated with it. And this is my story of having a blog, then losing it and finally restoring it along with the lessons learned in the process. I hope this also serves as a lesson to others as well so they avoid my mistakes.

    Let’s start from the beginning. Back in 2009-10, I was thinking of  starting a blog/website of my own, with my own top level domain. Back then, I didn’t even had a bank account. I had to deposit the amount in cash in the domain name seller’s account to get the domain. After the hectic experience of standing in queues, confirming about the deposit with the seller over phone, I was in no mood to spend any more for this and was looking for the best way to host my blog (for free).

   The easy choice was blogger but, it had a lot of limitations for what I had in mind for my site. So after a bit googling, I settled on wordpress, downloaded and installed in my local system and was confident that I can do it in a web server too. Now I started looking for free web servers to host my blog without imposing much restrictions and after a lot of  trial and error settled with x10hosting. The conditions were: I have to login once a month and can have only 3 domains, 3 sub-domains and 3 mysql databases at max in free account. This was not a problem…….at first.
   To be honest (with myself), I’m not a frequent blogger though I certainly didn’t intended to be like that. Initially the enthusiasm of setting up and tweaking wordpress kept me busy with it. But gradually  I lost interest in it and it was evident from the gaps of months and even years between my posts. So, I tend to forget about the blog. However, the once in a month login requirement reminds me of it. This was just a little annoyance I could tolerate for all the facilities I was getting. There were some hiccups as well, like database server unavailable or the server is not responding. But all the resources were free, you can’t really demand service quality without paying for it.

   Everything was going just fine when I forgot to login for a month and my host brutally deleted my account with all my files. I don’t blame them. They had sent me a reminder and a grace period of 21 days before deleting my account. But, the mail got lost in the heaps of junk mail I receive everyday. I just noticed it on 23rd day, after I found out that my site is offline.
  So after four blogs (2 failed, 2 survived) and seven years later, I’m back to square one. Well, not exactly. I had database backups of both the blogs from a few months back and since there were no new posts after that, I at least had the contents of my earlier posts. But, everything else; the images, the files, static web pages and few of my custom developed codes were lost, forever.

    So now, with the database backups with me, I tried to create another user with x10hosting but found out they have stopped accepting signups from my country. Then I started researching free web hosts again, tried a few but I found none to be feasible. Some offered ridiculously low web space, some offered only a sub-domain of their choice and a few wanted to watermark my blog with their logo (which I absolutely don’t like). For sometime, I considered buying a paid web hosting service. But for a relatively irregular blogger, paying up regularly just to keep the blog alive was not reasonable enough (for me). With all these fruitless research, I was angry and frustrated (with myself). At a point, I felt like what it might feel to a homeless migrant, my blog certainly did.
   Finally, in a desperate attempt to make my blog live, I decided to return to blogger and started to tinker with it to accept my existing posts from wordpress. In almost every step, I ran into difficulties for which I had to look into second (even third) page of google to resolve. But at least my blogs are now live and I’m currently working on to fix the parts that are broken.

    As I continue to work with blogger, I find it having all most all the features you may need for a decent blog. If a feature is missing then look around, you might find  a third party plug-in or widget doing just that. I probably will write another post summarising my experience going through the migration from wordpress to blogger, as this post is already big for my standard.

   Have you experienced this type of problems as well? Please share your story and what you did to deal with it.

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Stitched pieces from her torn diary

     She was around seven, when her grandma used to tell, “One day your prince charming will come and will take you with him”. The very idea of leaving her loving family was rather scary than dreamy. And she would snuggle into her lap sobbing, “I’m not going anywhere”.

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   Growing up…, going to school together, playing together and at times fighting with her cousin was the major part of her daily life. Oddly enough, the women around her used to describe them as co-wives. It was not even funny. How come her beloved sister can be compared with an envious co wife? She could only murmur (saying it aloud to their face was disrespectful. So what, you are just 10.), “Get lost old lady”.

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   She finished high school and was pretty excited about upcoming years of college life while her dad was counting the years left. She continued her college while offering an extra hand to her mom. The mistakes in kitchen or so called behavioral skills earned her criticisms from Mom. And mom was right. “if you continue this attitude I’m definitely going to get scolded at your in-laws place. Everyone will blame the mother” – her mom used to say. Then, there is that proverb, “Duhita: dui kulaku hita”, meaning The actions of the girl brings glory (or shame) to both the families. She used to wonder if the proverbs were made by men.
   She used to comply silently. But, you can only control your actions not your thoughts. The discontentment was growing. She made up her mind not to be dependent on anyone. That she should be capable enough to get herself food and shelter. After all that is what she’ll get in a marriage and which might cost her hopes, desires and independence. She should not; she must not spend the rest of her life inside four walls of the kitchen. She decided to fight, no matter what comes in her way.

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     Her dad sometimes try to explain her that nobody wants her earnings and It’s better to get married in the right age. And again there’s that proverb, “Bina ashraye banchi na paranti kabita, banita, lata”. Literally translates to - A poem, a girl and an epiphyte cannot survive without support.  “What a mean proverb!! Must be written by a man” – she used to think.

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    However, the 1^st step for becoming independent; getting a job, was not that easy for her. She didn’t get a campus placement like many of her friends did. After graduation, she tried getting a job in The Silicon Valley of India, but had to come back home because of ever increasing pressure of get a job or comeback home arguments. Many of her friends who stayed back got jobs in a while.
     Luck wasn’t too hard on her either. She got a small job in a little known company, then switched to a well-established organization with better pay but an inferior role and eventually a job of her liking with a fair pay in a good organization. It was high time to look for suitable matches now, although proposals were coming in even before she completed her studies

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This is how it happens in an arranged marriage. You have to dress up “properly”. Tips will pour in from her family and well-wishers. “Why don’t you wear a saree- you will look much slimmer” , “Oh my girl is looking so dark today-did you not used any fairness cream?”.
     Then comes the presentation. Some unknown guys will stare at her from head to toe, scrutinizing every feature. Sometimes this leads to a very awkward silence for few seconds. There will be enquiries like, “Can you cook ?” , “Will you be able to relocate?”, “How much do you earn?” , “Will you be able to wear saree?” and “Will you be able to quit your job if he goes abroad?”. This is just a small subset of questions. Some people ask about height and then try to compare by standing next to her. She suddenly becomes a product from a person.
      Now there is that decision making. If her family and relatives find the guy OK but, somehow she doesn’t find the guy appealing, it’s hard to explain them the reason. Somehow she becomes a burden to them. People will try to advise, “Being a girl you have rejected so many proposals, you shouldn’t be so choosy”. These are small things, some say. But she realizes words are small but scars are deep. It hurts bad when your parents get sad about your upcoming birthday. She believes, marriage is a beautiful journey, a journey worth travelling. But what if from early childhood you put an impression on a baby girl that she has to leave her home. Why won’t she think that marriage is awful? The entire childhood, in her teens and in young age, the topic of her marriage was never out of conversation. If in the name of marriage a girl has to go through all this chaos, better kill the baby girl.

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Sometimes she used to wonder whether she has become so selfish and self-centered that she’s unable to recognize people that care for her. She loves her parents and very well knows they love her even more. They certainly mean well, yet she hasn’t been able to justify the experiences she has gone through. Is it the fault of the society? But then who makes up the society? Are we trapped in a structure that we created for our wellbeing? Is it so hard to change for the good? She will have to find her own answers.
 

-Anonymous

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