This blog is moving! You can now read all things Shepherd’s Bush just as you did before but this time at the following URL:
http://shepherds-bush.blogspot.com/
For the techies amongst you this means I am moving from WordPress to Blogger – the main reason is that for a long time I have not carried any adverts on this site. In the early days, when there were a handful of people reading it, there wouldn’t have been much point anyway. But for the last year thousands of people every month have been, I publish my stats at the end of every month. Last month there were 11,009 views for example.
And many of you, including one reader who left a comment on the last stats post, have said that for all the work that this blog takes – and it is a lot, from the little hobby it was originally thought of back in 2008, I should see if I can earn something in return. Even then I was reluctant – and in any case WordPress don’t allow it! Imagine my surprise then this morning to log on to this site to see adverts that had been put there by WordPress themselves! They are now apparently going to put ads on here anyway to earn money for themselves – so I’m moving to blogspot where at least I’ll be able to have some control over the ads that you see. Most of them will be for local businesses to W12 and H&F. And yes, earn a little bit back myself!
So bookmark the new address – the content will be exactly the same and even better still. We’ve got a really exciting year ahead, starting with the general and local elections, the summer of festivals in W12 and around and more besides. To those of you who’ve been long time readers (and in many cases sources of stories) thank-you. To newish readers I hope you like what you see.
And see you at the new place!
Good plan. I didn’t know WordPress.com don’t allow ads – that’s shocking. I’ve never used a wordpress.com hosted blog, though I do pretty much everything on WordPress.org self-hosted blogs, which are amazing – total control, but they cost $100 a year to host with someone like Dreamhost, so if you can get away with a free Blogger blog, why not.
You might want to check out this informative post about migrating WP.com > Blogger, dealing with export/import file format problems and handling redirects.
http://blog.sethladd.com/2010/03/migrate-from-wordpress-to-blogger.html
The thing I’d be most worried about was losing subscribers – most people are subscribed by RSS, I’d assume. I’ve always used Feedburner for my feed address, so that I can shift platforms without losing people. Might be worth doing thinking about doing that now, so that you can change again in the future without anyone.
On that note, the other thing that’s worth considering is buying a domain name. Blogger allows you to use your own domain name – and should you decide you don’t like Blogger in the future, or want to move to a self-hosted blog for more features & control, then you can do that without changing address again.
Many thanks Rupert, much appreciated
Rupert’s comment re feeds is relevant as I look forward to reading all my feeds daily whereas I would read you on a rather iregular basis if only book-marked. I’m not a big fan of ads but see the logic and hope you make a few bucks for the work you put in to this fantastic site.
Many thanks Maree, very much appreciated – see you at the new place!
Just spent ages writing a witty response re Shaun of the Bailey and then got wiped out cos of the new site (which is nice) but I don’t get how to post…. and you might be grateful not to recieve my drivvel (never knew how to spell drivvle) So advice please if you have a moment.
Yes, the standard Blogger comments system is now more of a pain than the WordPress system. Their attempt to reduce spam. It’s been a while since I used Blogger, but I’m pretty sure there’ll be an option hidden somewhere (or a code hack) to turn off the Captcha preview/approval – and there’s definitely an option you can turn on to allow people to comment with just a name and URL, like here – I’ve seen it on other Blogger blogs.
Hi Viv
Sorry about that, I’m going to try and turn the comments thing off but bear with me
Chris
All comments can now be made without signing in!!!
Oooh! Ta I’ll give it a go!