all i needed was more

I’ve been writing a blog since it was known as a web log – about 9 years.  I’ve routinely switched around to newer software, various domains and types of ISPs.

I still remember my first weblog that I published using greymatter.  It was thrilling to have a voice.  Back in those days, I hosted my own domain and I had a lot of time to tinker with minutiae.

Eventually, I settled on b2evolution.  I liked b2evo for a lot of reasons.  One of my favorite features is the ability to insert a tag into the post that automatically creates an excerpt.  The excerpt is show on the blog home page with a link to the full post.  It’s generally called a ‘more’ tag – as it click here to read more.

As I wrote hundreds of posts, I spent less time massaging the blog layouts.  I have both lost interest in deailing with it and would rather spend my limited free time actually writing posts.  Yes, I’m one of those people writes a blog merely to express myself through writing.

Feeling rash at the end of last year, I moved over to blogger.  I have been using a lot of google applications and I assumed that blogger would be as good as the standard google ones like gmail and spreadsheets.

Generally blogger was fine except for one thing – the ability to split a tag.  I tend to write longer posts and I think it’s annoying for all of the post to load in the home page.  I prefer to split the post and allow the reader to easily scan the home page.

Good luck doing this in blogger.  b2evolution used the a simple tag to split the post.  Blogger’s ’solution’ to this was to add a css tag.  Ok fine, I add the tag and it works.  But, whenever I wanted to change my site design, the css tag gets whacked.

Enter wordpress.  My friend Heather has been using it for years.  I didn’t listen to her then, but she was right!  WordPress is the best blog tool around in 2008.  Nathaniel converted our fútbol zine American Soccer News to it before this season.  I’m impressed with the editor which, indeed, has a button to split the post.

But most of all, I was impressed with the import feature.  I was able to setup a wordpress account and import everything except my blogroll from blogger.  The promise of XML delivered.

So for the first time in quite a while, I switch away from a google application.  I’m not sure why they bought blogger and have not given it the attention it needs to complete with other more capable blog software.