PhotoDude.com

Mon. Jan 29, 2001

Blogger to GreyMatter

Greymatter – I think many of us, especially myself, owe the folks at Blogger a huge dumptruck of thanks (although I’m sure they’d prefer a wheelbarrow of cash). If I hadn’t found this article back in July, 2000, I would have continued to think that a web log is just another Time Sucking Vortex that I don’t need.

Blogger gave me a tool that convinced me it was do-able, yet gave me no indication how important the web log would eventually become to me, and to my site (currently, about 1800 visitors per month enter through the web log). Truly, they placed a new literary form in my hands.

But sometimes they scare me.

Yesterday, I went to their site to do my daily update of Pixel Pile, one of two accounts I have with them, which you see combined as one page on this web log. Instead of the usual greeting, and links to my two web logs, the page welcomed me (logged in properly), and invited me to create my first web log. It seemed to have lost, or forgotten about the two I have, and have been working on for a combined 12 months.

They appeared gone, without a trace, or way to access them via Blogger.

Of course, the problem went away soon enough, and I could once again access my accounts, but it gave me, oh, an hour to totally freak out. I used that hour to get GreyMatter installed on my server, and after some bickering and cussing about CHMOD problems (if you don’t know, you don’t want to know), got the program functional online.

Of course, I was up until 4am trying to customize the 4,963 settings GreyMatter allows you to control, but I think it will be worth it. This week, I’ll be placing my entries online via Blogger, as always, and concurrently adding them to this GreyMatter version (you can check out the new features, including the ability for visitors to add comments). By next weekend, this web log should be entirely powered by GreyMatter.