PhotoDude.com

Sat. Jan 12, 2002

BlogSpotters, Smell the Coffee

BlogSpotters, Smell the Coffee – Welcome to the Unsolicited Advice Department. Please have a seat, the headmaster is very busy right now. Those of you who have sites hosted on BlogSpot, yes, you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and y’all, and you, and you, and y’all, and you, and you, and, finally, you. Perhaps most especially you. Y’all, please come with me, and you can leave behind the Personal Paddle you were issued when you arrived. I’ll be using the Clue Bat today.

Now. Wassamatta U? This morning, and at multiple times in the past week or so, your sites have been inaccessible. Or suffering from ”frozen content.” I know, there have been problems with both BlogSpot and Blogger.

Don’t make me call you a ”victim.”

I pick on you people because I know you’re all capable of seeing through my curmudgeonly nature. I know this because I drink in your presence on the web regularly. I ”know” you. In some of the above cases, I’ve watched you be born, often out of a great crisis, and quickly evolve in amazing ways. And let there be no doubt, Ev and everyone ever involved in Blogger/BlogSpot provide an invaluable service, so that people like you, and hundreds of thousands of others, can quickly and easily ”be born” on the web. It is likely none of us, including myself, would be here in this form without them.

But for many that stage has passed. You’ve become a very real and substantive presence on the web, and grown into the role. But you’ve outgrown your structure. And you are dependent on not only the techno-snafu’s of an increasingly overloaded system (yes, I know improvements are coming), but also on the vaguaries of Net Business. A place where companies/services sometimes vaporize overnight. While I hope that never happens with Blogger, you have to know, the end of free is near.

A real curmudgeon might even add that some of you very high traffic individuals contribute greatly to the excess demand placed on the BlogSpot/Blogger servers. Whether you paid your $12 to get rid of an ad or not.

But most importantly, you have figured out this Internet Thang is gonna be around a while, haven’t you? And that, for the decades of life you have left, it might be wise to go ahead and snatch yourself your own permanent piece of the action? Like an e-mail address that never has to change again, for the rest of your life? Nevermind having a place where you can quickly post pictures / sound files for friends and family (privately, if you desire, even on the web). And do you not think in today’s world, many clients/employers find people they want to give money via a cold search of the web? I can assure you from experience, they do. If your info isn’t out there, preferably in some permanent location under your control, you won’t show up.

All of these things can be had for as little as $15 dollars a month, plus a maximum of $35 a year to own the domain. I bet you spend more on beer.

Some of you may even have domains, but keep your weblog within BlogSpot. Perhaps you’re still evolving your thinking about your presence on the web, but allow me to kick you in the butt. When I started a weblog (7/16/2000), using Blogger, it was pretty much a whim. ”Let’s see what makes this thing tick.” It quickly developed into much more, and with the addition of Pixel Pile, I had to ask myself, would it be a Good Thing to have this fresh content and new images on the home page of my domain? Duh! That’s one of the reasons you find my weblog here and its original location: I didn’t clue in to the importance of it at first.

We all know better now.

I know, Blogger and Blogspot are free oh-so-easy point-and-clicky goodness. But clearly, the World Wide Web is going to be a significant part of your existence, for the rest of your life.

Get under the hood.

Buy a domain. Find a decent web host, HTML authoring software (it ain’t rocket science, folks), and a dedicated ”content management system” (what you might know as Blogger). They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Greymatter and Moveable Type are the two I would recommend, but there are a host of others, and there’s one to fit your needs. Perhaps it’s the allegedly forthcoming pay version of Blogger, but I highly recommend using something that is dedicated to serving you, not hundreds of thousands of people. If you have trouble getting it set up, with all that icky CHMOD’ing and stuff, there is someone, somewhere who can help you. You can even pay an expert. But it will be a struggle. You will cuss. And in the end, you’ll have a much better understanding of the web, a stronger appreciation for it, and a much better presence on it.

You think I’m bad? Just wait. He’s been very restrained, but you know it’s gonna happen. Charles is going to start gloating. We can’t have that. He needs to stay focused.