January 31, 2007
Aloha 'Oe' My Wide Blue Seas?
The Palms of Wailoa Hilo Hawaii
My Blogging life is about to change, blogger beta is comming to eat me alive... And there is a risk that My Wide Blue Seas may disappere off the face of the Internet through no fault of my own. If that happens I will pick it up again at
http://mywideblueseas.wordpress.com/I cried all day yesterday... Its like yet another death, and it hurts alot. I have been reading the horror stories about missing blogs and missing entries and all of that and thought " Well, I am going to set up a new account and see how Blogger Beta works before I make any assumptions.
Its worse than my worst fears
None of my template work will make it over. I tested them all. most were takeoffs from designs by Mela of the blog,
Diaphanety, she is a good code writer and these were some of her first, so Im sure that code use changes (heavens I dont know???)I dont understand why they dont work in Beta? I spent many many hours tweeking them and adding the artwork, and the links. The idea that I am going to lose all of this is very painful. But I dont have much choice do I?
So...it looks like I will have to start from scratch. I dont have a utility that will let me save the templates in a meaningful way, so I am looking for that. I also have only a small amount of the actual content saved. I am working on that today. It wont be transmittable into acrchives, But I will have it and should I want to use the materiel to write a book I will have it in a form that is useful.
The three smaller blogs
Hokulea~Star of Gladness,
Lux Aeterna, and
Hawaii Calls!, are all on a 2 column format and will adapt well to the Beta templates,which, by the way are the most boring ugly things around, they stink... with some tweeking and changing of the fonts and adding a few pictures. None of that is possible right now, and they will be boring visually. Since the only three column template that I have found that said that it was compatible with Beta wasnt, MWBS and the
Ohio photoblog, which may become a journal about my future exploits in the jewelry trade (starting with a return trip to Ohio and the Druhards school to brush up on what I learned when I was there last...)are really going to be downgraded. No links no pics and a really reduced content. Many of the web gadgets and buttons will not work and with a two column page will not fit... And Beta and Haloscan are not compatible. They have scrapped Bloggerbot in Hello, which I loved, and the photo upload with Blogger stinks just now. I hate it
I have watched the struggles of blogger friends with the transition. Smoothstone changes the template everyday it seems, trying to find a good fit and the content of that great blog is, while not reduced, is harder to find. Our friend Luz, of Doves and Pomegrantes has fallen off the face of blogger earth, because of a Beta error, with no recourse. I read on "Blogger Help" fourms, the dispair of people that are trying to get things straightened out to no avail, and feel their pain deeply.
My Blogs are a really important part of my life. I havent realized this until faced with losing them. While I have saved my content into a printable format, the photos along with that, the look and feel was important to me, just as my clothing is important to how I look. The reduction in circumstances for my blogs bothers me.
I fear losing everything, and will not make the move unless I must. I will be playing with the test blog in Beta so I can be ready when it happens and I can only hope that things go well.
Any sugestions?
