I’ll get to it, I promise
Posted By Sika on January 12, 2009
Working on another bulk, massive update (yay!), but I’m thinking about leaving livejournal. Seriously enough that I only paid them for 2 more months.
So, I need advice and here’s what I’m thinking:
I don’t want blogger because, well, google already has access to too much of my life. Whether or not I think they will use that information is pretty much irrelevant to the fact that it makes me uncomfortable to have so much of my life dependent on one company.
Don’t want insanejournal or one of those because the names are just too unprofessional.
I like the idea of WordPress.com, but you can’t friends lock entries. You can password protect them, but I prefer that people who aren’t permitted to read certain posts don’t know that there’s a post there that they can’t read. This may be a dealbreaker.
I like the idea of WordPress.org (there are plugins to solve that irritating no friends lock thing), but then I have to pay for hosting, and none of them are cheap enough. $7/mo is a lot more than the $14/year or whatever I was paying lj.
Vox.com might be ok? Has anybody heard anything about it? It’s owned by six apart, and I don’t know if I want to deal with them again–or more to the point, with whoever they sell vox to next week or next month.
Any other ideas, oh geniuses?
i’ve seen a number of friends migrate to other platforms, many without the social network or “friends” page of LJ, and i don’t know how their readership changed with their decision but i know i have not read their blogs since. i suppose part of that is that i’m a creature of habit and it may be that i’m just too lazy to bother setting up an RSS to follow all these separate blogs.
but then again i also really like how LJ has been set up. i think it encourages more “personal” journalling than many blog formats do and it’s far, far cleaner than myspace or other social network sites. i haven’t sent LJ any money for years, just sticking with my basic account, and i’ve been perfectly fine with that. i don’t mind the few ads i see on my log-in page or the occasional upgraded journal i glance at but i don’t see them on my friends page and that’s what i’m looking at 90% of the time.
Well, I would suggested insanejournal, in spite of your “unprofessional” objection.
Ultimately the only real professional blogs would be those provided by newspapers and such. As long as you maintain a reasonable user name I don’t think the journal name will matter. Much like email addresses. As long as it doesn’t have some pornographic or seriously inappropriate name I think you’re fine. Insane journal is more of a cutesy/gimmicky theme than inappropriate by any stretch of the imagination.
Insane journal offers much of the same resources (including filters) as LJ and you can archive your LJ there, since it’s the same software. So there’s very little learning curve or effort on your part, which is nice. Plus, the owner is awesome and you can talk to him, and his wife, like a normal human being.
I’ve tried a few blogs and settled with insanejournal, myself.
You’re the only person I have suggested get an insanejournal, actually.
-Sarah
It’s probably irrational, but I just feel like the name is, hmmm, I dunno. I guess the best way to describe it, is, when I think of giving out my blog address to people I might want a professional relationship with, well, that’s the reason I have a second gmail account, because the one I regularly use feels too unprofessional for that purpose, too.
And I’m probably being paranoid, and reacting to the disproportionate number of people I deal with right now who are unaware of the blogosphere and so are less likely to recognize that hey, that’s just a domain name.
So yeah, probably irrational, but that’s how I feel.
Which other blogs have you tried? What were their pros and cons?
If I made the lj feed and posted the link, could you be bothered to add that?
i suppose i could be bothered to add that.
i enjoy reading about your time in Africa, even when it’s less adventure and more mundane.
Greatest Journal is dead. They actually suggested everyone go to Insane Journal. They were fine before that. And they actually had their TOS built to respect customers, which was rare and I liked. They just aren’t built for much capacity and didn’t seem to actually want to grow much.
Blogger bugs the heck out of me. I can’t stand anything about it.
Myspace doesn’t have enough controls. And, I don’t like the site to begin with.
Facebook has a blog I think. Also no controls.
There was another few blogs I tried, some news community one and I can’t remember the other two but very similar. None had the controls, even over who could reply or friend you, so it wasn’t worth even remembering them beyond, “Ass and more ass.” and moving on. Mostly those were specific for talking about local, national, or international events really.
I haven’t heard of anything else worth trying. I’m at insanejournal now and that’s working fine, so no reason to go much further.
-Sarah