Sunday, May 3, 2015

My Blog is Moving!



I am excited to announce that from this point forward, new updates to the Simdale Valley Post will be located at the new site,www.simdalevalleypost.blog!

In making this transition, I've tried to think about what is easiest for my readers, who I appreciate so much!  I am 99% sure that you don't have to log in to leave a comment on my new site. I have a spam filter, Akismet, and if spam does become an issue in the future, I may have to require log-in at that point.  If you do use WordPress or Gravatar, you'll be able to follow the site that way.  Or, you'll see a place to register to receive updates by email.   Please contact me using the links on the About Me page if you have any trouble following or leaving a comment, because I am still learning.  

A Regular Day was the last update that will be added to Blogger; it was also posted at the new site. This blog will remain here as it currently is, indefinitely, in case it is needed.  Blogger has been good, but for a while I've been thinking of switching to WordPress as a platform.    Once I took the leap, it didn't take long before I felt the change was worth the effort.  I hope you like it too, and it is easier for more readers to access.  

See you at the new site!

14 comments:

  1. Hey Shannon, congratulations on the new blog! I'm having an issue with it though; Inoreader doesn't seem to be able to find an RSS feed for it. :\ I'll subscribe via e-mail if I have to, but I'd rather not, if at all possible! Is there anything that can be done about that? Thanks!

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  2. Commenting again just so I can check "notify me" - I forgot in my first comment!

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    1. Hi Carla, I spent some time this morning before work trying to figure out the feed issue with Inoreader. The RSS feed is: http://www.simdalevalleypost.com/feed/ but I don't know if that helps you. I'm still learning my way around the plug-ins and all, and haven't found one yet to feed to Inoreader. It's by google, right? I'm also working on the Google site verification, maybe that will help. There is an RSS link at the bottom of the blog now, but it just gives you a bunch of html code. As you can tell, this is a steep learning curve for me.

      I'll keep trying to provide an easy way to connect to Inoreader, thanks for letting me know.

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    2. Just tried adding the direct RSS link and it worked! Thanks Shannon!

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  3. Wordpress is awesome! I don't think you will be disappointed! When I try to add the new site to feedly, it always comes back to this blog, I'll have to wait until you put up a new post to see if it actually shows on my feedly. But I can follow you through wordpress now too.

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    1. Thanks, I'll check about Feedly too, and put up a test post for you this evening to see if it is already ok.

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    2. I had to use the RSS feed link that you gave Carla above, otherwise I was not getting updates on feedly. It's all set up now. Agree that wordpress is awesome! :) I wouldn't change, and yay on the domain! I actually have one for my photos, but have never used it for my actual blog... I don't even know why.

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    3. Maisie, I'm glad you figured out a work around. I haven't been able to figure out or find any helpful info on how to make sure your self-hosted WordPress has proper RSS feeds or shows up on them. This summer I plan to contact support and/or find a Dummies book to study about how to manage a domain.

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  4. So why are you moving? Is it for the awesome new domain? Last I heard, you weren't planning to learn WordPress. Or maybe I'm misremembering.

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    1. It was kind of the other way around, Echo Weaver. I wanted WordPress, and had been checking it out for a while but it looked so foreign compared to Blogger I planned on figuring it out during the summer. I may have waffled a few times and said I wasn't going to do it, don't remember that. Then I found a helpful how-to, and the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. My husband and I talked about it, and he said if I was going to move I ought to take the leap to my own domain instead of then moving again in a few years. (For some reason he thinks I'm going to stick with this sims blogging hobby, hmm.)

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    2. By the other way around, I mean that wanting WordPress was before wanting a domain. But in the process of transferring to WordPress we decided to go with a domain.

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    3. I follow. So what made you want Wordpress that badly? I am not terribly attached to Blogger, and I know that WordPress is more popular, but I've never had any idea what makes it better.

      Actually, come to think of it, my husband set up a WordPress blog on our personal domain for a travel blog. I contributed content to the blog, but I didn't look very far under the hood.

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    4. Cool- you have a personal domain with a travel blog? Nice.

      One reason I really wanted WordPress was for ease for more readers, because more blogs I read are on WordPress now. A couple of readers had told me they started a google account just to be able to comment here, and one reader said she just couldn't bring herself to do that, so she wasn't commenting. Also, Blogger is notorious about eating comments, but that's something I learned to work around.

      I actually felt similarly to you, I thought I don't know why its so popular, the first 6 times or so I poked around in WordPress; I couldn't find stuff, which is why I thought I'm going to have to do this when I have a block of time. But the reason I was poking around there in the first place was that I've been feeling limited by the themes in Blogger for a while. When they switched from "classic" to the new responsive ones, I could never find one I really loved, and the choices suddenly seemed so much more limited. The responsiveness is great, they show up great on mobile devices, but I just wasn't crazy about any of the themes even though I tweaked the colors and all in customize. They haven't been adding themes to Blogger for a while and it makes me wonder if they are moving more to Google Plus, which acts more like Tumblr or Facebook. But WordPress appears that it will be around for a while since it is the most used blogging platform by far.

      WordPress has hundreds or maybe thousands of themes. There are more features available in a regular post, than in blogger, at least to me, who hasn't ventured into using the html code to edit stuff. One small example is that you can either post a unique "feature photo" at the top of each post, or ignore that feature. The menus for pages are much more flexible. and now that I'm using it, there are so many areas where I have so much more control over what I do. For example, just posting a picture in a post has a lot more options for size and linking, and seems more streamlined to me. I hope that info is helpful.

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