I’ve actually been thinking about moving my blog over here for quite some time. Two things stopped me: everyone knows my blogger address, and there’s a lot of shit on that one! Luckily, I have found a way to import everything from that blog to here. This means that I no longer have to deal with some of the more frustrating aspects of blogger. Such as not being able to comment within a comment. Or not being able to organize my tags into categoriess (i.e. have “Personal Essays” be a category, with subjects listed underneath it as tags). Or telling blogger to do one thing while it does another (like when it doesn’t center a photo).
Also, WordPress tracks my followers, so I don’t have to worry about installing Google Analytics every time I change my webpage’s theme. And I can even keep the same name as my old blog, since it is a continuation of that blog, not a new one entirely.
I have also decided that, since I just celebrated my blog’s one year anniversary, and since I will soon be wrapping up all of my SIFF posts, now would be as good a time as any to change direction. The immediate reason, however, is Grace Wang telling me that my blog lost her comment to my post. No web program should lose even one word of what she writes.
So, I will include a message on my old blog that I have moved here, with my final two SIFF posts appearing here and only here. I imagine there will be a lot of tweaking and retooling over the next few days, as I get used to all of the options that this new format provides me with.
Dreams of Literary Grandeur 
Just one thing: you can’t put tags into categories here either; you can only put sub-categories.
I wonder if that’s what you meant.
By the way, I don’t know if it’s all that good an idea to reply within a comment. If you write another comment, I have the option of getting an e-mail, but I’ll never realise you’ve commented if you write inside the comment. It’s only good for massive comments sections like Ebert’s because it’s impossible to have an e-mail comment alert there, so you have to check back anyway.
Btw, turns out you came to wordpress for almost exactly the same reasons I did, just that you took a year longer than I did to decide. 🙂 … and see, full-blown smileys!
Well, that means you just have to keep coming back to check the comments section, doesn’t it? 😉
If I had known I could import my entire blog from blogger, I would have jumped ship earlier. And yes, I meant sub-categories, not tags.
Welcome!! Blogspot is nightmare and I find that I don’t even bother commenting a lot of the time because I just KNOW it will get lost (I actually tried to post a comment 4 times on your blog once, months ago, then gave up). This is much better. And wayyy easier to keep track of everything! Yay! My goal would be ultimately to have everyone (minus RE) to be on wordpress…
p.s. Ronak, if the comments are moderated that means you’ll get an email notice of your comment being posted anyway, and isn’t it easier to see the reply right in the same notification? That’s why I started doing that, to save people the hassle of opening up another email just for a one-liner.
LD: Like this? 😉
Actually, I can say from experience on your blog that wordpress doesn’t think of it that way. According to it, you don’t need to get notified at the publishing of your own comment.
You mean, if you checked the “notify me of follow-up comments via email” box with your comment, which is then held for moderation and then approved, you don’t get an email notification of your comment?
LD: I think what he’s trying to say, Grace, is that if I go in and “edit” the comment (as I do when I include my responses here), Ronak would have to come back in order to see whether or not I’d replied to it, whereas if I hit the “reply” button (or just left a comment), then he would get notification, as he does when others leave a comment. If I hold other comments until I’ve put my comment inside them, however, then he’ll see my response, too.
No, LD, even in the second case I won’t. WordPress just thinks of it as my comment, which is something I don’t need to be notified about.
Glad you got that book thing sorted out.
LD: Me, too. Proves that blogger is good for something. 😉
Now that you have made it to the Promised Land, how much time and hassle did it cause you?
LD: Well, I spent about three hours playing around with it on Friday night, but it’s really easy to import one’s blog from, say, blogger, to here. The only thing I haven’t figured out how to do yet is sell my poetry book from the sidebar. Apparently, it takes some technical trickery to do that on WordPress.
I’m sure you’ll see changes to this blog in the coming weeks, as I figure out more cool stuff that I can do on here. Oh, and feel free to join us. 🙂
My advice,as an old resident: add a text widget, and you can copy any html into that (it should be provided by the site through whom you’re selling, from wherever you got the html to add it to your blogger account; wordpress doesn’t allow javascript but I don’t think your book-selling thing required it).
LD: Tried that. In my case, I would add a “Buy Now” button from PayPal, and WordPress blocks out anything from the sidebar that could be an ad. On the other hand, I don’t have that many poetry books left, and some of my high school and college friends still haven’t bought one.
LD: Okay, I added a link to my old blog, so people can go there if they want to purchase a copy of my poetry book. Not too many are left, though, so I may not have the “Buy Now” button up there for long. I’ll be bringing whatever I have left to Ebertfest, so let me know if you want me to reserve a copy for you.
At first I was worried I wouldn’t be able to comment on here or follow you anymore but I’m glad to see that’s not the case. 🙂
LD: Not the case at all! Just make sure that you list this blog as the one you’re following, and not the one from blogger.