Without Form or Blogspot

I am pleased to announce that tohu va bohu has joined forces with WordPress, leaving the Blogspot world behind. You may be wondering, Why switch now after almost two years at Blogger? Here are some questions and answers that may help explain the change.

What is the same?

• The new blog will still contain formless and empty posting. You can count on that. And let’s also throw ‘sporadic’ in there for good measure.
• The new blog contains all previous posts and comments. WordPress has a great import feature; it couldn’t have been easier. I’m impressed.
• The new blog still isn’t a MySpace. Nothing could make me happier.

What’s better?

• tohu va bohu is found at its own domain address, meaning 1) it is no longer associated with my name, and 2) perhaps it will be easier to share. As far as you know, I have no more name changing or address moving to do ever again in the history of the world.
• WordPress enables easier customization. I’ve only skimmed the list of available plug-ins, but I like the control.
• The new template is cleaner, crisper, and sharper. I had done a lot of work to the old blogspot template, but I still wasn’t satisfied with the look or ease of navigation.
• The primary font is now more computer screen friendly. I’ve gone round and round in my head on this one, but most of the web site designs I enjoy are sans-serif, so Georgia is no longer on my mind.
• tohu va bohu should have more uptime. Even though Blogger has gotten much better, I don’t enjoy or appreciate the “scheduled outages.”

What’s new?

• Topbar. The new top bar should make for easier navigation. I tried to accomplish this idea in the sidebar before, but was never really happy with it.
• Tags. I know that Technorati tagging is possible with some Greasemonkey scripting through Firefox in Blogger, but I don’t need Technorati tags for each post and WordPress makes in-house tagging much easier.
• Trackbacks. I’m not entirely sure how trackbacks work, nor are there a lot of people posting at their blog about something I’ve written. But it is nice to know that trackbacks are there if you need them.
• Series. The Series index can be viewed from the Topbar. These series were categories on the old blog, but categories and series are not really the same in my mind. Categories loosely connect different posts, while series are purposefully related posts with a particular order. So on the new blog categories will identified with ‘tags,’ and even though each series will have its own tag, the series can be read in its indended order by consulting the series index.
• Recently commented list. I don’t get that many comments, especially compared to the old PyroManiac days, but this is a cool feature that also enables new comments on old posts to be highlighted.
• Comment rss for each post. I don’t know how many people actually use this feature on WordPress blogs, but I’ve occasionally subscribed to the comments of someone’s post for a period of time, so I figured why not make it available at tohu va bohu.
• Random post. Every time you refresh tohu va bohu a new “random” post is proffered in the upper left hand corner. This feature is somewhat superfluous, but anything that gets someone to stick around longer at the site is valuable.
• More space. I’m not sure I know what Blogger’s space limitations are, of course, the only thing Blogger actually “hosts” besides the content of the posts are pictures. I had been hosting my images on the one28 server for the last few months anyway. But with the new site, I now have over 20GB of storage and a ridiculous limit on bandwidth per month. Obviously this will do pictures and posts with ease while also allowing the one28 site to piggyback for storage of audio and video files.
• Footer. I have always wanted to embrace my bottom. And even though there are more things I could probably add, I like that there are more things to do when you get to the bottom of the page.
• Little icons. Aren’t they cute?

What’s bad?

• I did spend more time tweaking the template…again. It’s almost like a hobby for me now; something I enjoy. But it does take time.
• I will also need to spend more time adding tags to each previous post. At the current time I’ve done almost no tagging, so as you check back in the weeks to come you should see progress.
• There is a theme developing here, but I also still have some time to spend changing self-referencing hyperlinks to their new permalink, and I also need to edit some of the code in previous posts, especially for picture padding.
• My blogging identity is associated with the blogspot address. While it shouldn’t take too long to update my profile in those various places, it is kind of a hassle.
• Another template facelift, new options and a new address are still no guarantee that I’ll have any posting of significance. Of course, that is why the name of this blog is tohu va bohu.

Hopefully this list was helpful, and hopefully you weren’t expecting an announcement like I was starting a group blog with Piper or something. If you have suggestions, or if you find a broken link or something else that doesn’t work, please let me know. If nothing else, just leave a comment saying that you’ve found the new site and give me some feedback.