June 6, 2013
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My Thoughts On WordPress
I really don’t know the first thing about blogging. I found this site 9 years ago and then I grudgingly adopted each new feature that came along when I absolutely couldn’t avoid it anymore. For example, I didn’t understand how to “friend” people on here for about three years after Xanga added the “friend” function. And the mini thing completely cracked me up. I gave minis willy nilly, I admit. It took me a long time to upload my first photo. (years). I’ve had…I can’t even tell you how much trouble…with the “themes” and what-have-you. Anyone remember when we got the new homepage and the universal inbox? For maybe…I don’t know…18 months…I just clicked on the link that said, “take me back to my old homepage” because I didn’t know how to use the new one.
So, I’m not a super-picky, features-driven, highly technical, savvy consumer kind of blogger, is what I’m telling you.
When I first read the Relaunch Xanga post it mentioned wordpress. So I went to wordpress.org. I couldn’t understand anything about wordpress.org. (in theory I now realize it’s the engine that underlies the interfaces I see in various places, but at the time I was all blah blah internet hooey blah).
So I went to wordpress.com.
I decided to see if it would be hard to have a blog on wordpress.
It turned out to be easy. It turned out to be super duper easy, even for someone like me, who still forgets to “friend” people on Xanga.
Things I like: if you already have your own community, it’s basically exactly the same as blogging here, because you already have a community. But I could see where it would be exceedingly hard to build a community on your own, if you just struck out on wordpress alone like a voyager to a new world. I like the weblog editor quite a lot. There are two of them, which is confusing, but the one on my “dashboard” is quite fancy while the one on my “reader” is streamlined enough to be easy for my iPad. I like the Reader page where I can find all the blogs I’m following. I like threaded comments. I like the dialogue box that notifies me about new comments. I like control over comments and how they’re posted or moderated or what-have-you. I love the “freshly pressed” theme-based Xanga-like front page, and have already found some fun and witty new blogs to read.
Things I don’t like: No private messages. The “reader” blogs are displayed in giant boxes which means I have to do quite a lot of scrolling to see what I’ve missed if I’m away for a day. I fear missing comments, because my dialogue box isn’t as big as the number of comments I might get if I’m away for a day. It feels a little more…public….over there. One upside to blogging on a place like Xanga where I’m a lot older than the age of the average user and where no one even thinks to come unless they’ve been on Xanga forever is that the odds of a person in my real life stumbling on my blog were zero. But then again, I really need to get over myself on that.
The key, of course, is to make sure that your Xanga friends are in your circle of friends on wordpress. During my nine years on Xanga I’ve had periods where my list of regular readers was down to like 3 or 4 people. I just kept blogging and sooner or later, more people found me, and I found them. I kinda think it will be same way on wordpress, although I can’t be certain.
Paying $1 a week for Xanga wouldn’t bother me in the least. It’s really a matter of where my friends are and what opportunity I have to meet other like-minded people. I occasionally feel like my opportunities for meeting new people on Xanga are limited, because even though I hear people say there are “1 million blogs,” or hundreds of thousands of blogs, it often feels to me like there are only about 250 regular bloggers on Xanga. There were more people than that in my high school graduating class, by a lot. And of course, of the 250, I probably interest (and am interested in) only ten or twenty percent.
I mean that in the absolutely least snobby way possible, says the person who knows she inadvertently sounds snobby sometimes.
Years ago I signed up on blogger. I blogged to myself without one single reader two or three or four times. Then I thought, eh, no. WordPress so far is turning out to be a good experience for me.
Comments (18)
I like what both WP and Blogger have to offer, but my problem with WP is the IP moderation. Not that IP modding is a bad thing, but it means that commentors’ IP’s are visible.
@QuantumStorm - I noticed this today. What’s the harm in it, as far as you can tell? I’ve been trying to think whether I care that my IP address is visible. Can you tell me why you do?
I totally agree.
@ordinarybutloud - With an IP address, it is possible to trace down a person’s location, down to a street address even. It is finicky though as it depends on the ISP (As sometimes the ISP will issue a set number of IP’s at any given time). There are ways around it, but I don’t care much for it. I’m still debating on whether it’s a serious issue or not though.
@QuantumStorm - but isn’t it true that people can do that anyway, on here? I swear I thought a bunch of people posted about their personal IP devices or whatever they are…blah blah blah stuff I don’t understand blah blah blah…I’ve been thinking a lot about my privacy issues. My MAIN fear is someone in my real life finding my blog, because then I would feel restrained about what I wanted to say. But as far as my online friends discovering my identity, I’m less worried, unless one of them is a psycho freak (which seems unlikely, though not impossible). But I kinda think if a psycho freak wants to find me, I have bigger problems than my IP address. HA.
@ordinarybutloud - I think on here there are third-party plugins you can use; however, from what I know there is no setting in Xanga that automatically lets you see IP addresses. (If you have sign-in lock disabled, you can see geographical areas but not specific IP addresses unless you have one of those third-party plugins)
Heh if you’re okay with the psychos then there isn’t much else to worry about
a lot of Xangans are going to WP though, which is part of why I’m still debating on going there.
THAT’S IT. BLOGGER. BLOGGER WOULD BE XANGA HELL. I remember blogger. Blogger and I are not friends.
I will miss the messaging system (both the IM and the e-mail type feature) and the ability to see a list of people I’m subscribed to and just click on a username. Can we do that on wordpress? I can’t find it.It is clean. I do like the front page. But I don’t know the people on the front page and I do here and I know that will change once I integrate myself more in the community over there but I like here better.
And the different thingies for the posting? I don’t understand. I am not technologically smart in any way. I was the same with the “friends” and the new home page and everything. Maybe it didn’t take me three years, but it took me a good amount of time. An embarrassing amount of time. Have a mini.
I set up a WordPress account, but haven’t touched it yet except to subscribe to a couple people (I haven’t even read the blogs I’ve subscribed to, because most people are still posting on xanga for the time being). I suppose I’ll have to use it sometime – even if xanga survives, not everyone I know will be able to stick around. I keep waffling between certainly pledging and almost certainly pledging
@ordinarybutloud - I think you can hide your wordpress blog from search engines in order to avoid people from your real life finding you, or there’s another option where you can allow who read your blog. I’m not sure yet, because I just found out about it this morning and it took me about an hour to find it. I have set it on, yet no one has visited my page so far, so I don’t know whether it’s working or not.
My username on wordpress is the same as my Xanga username.
Thank you for writing about wordpress. I am making a blog home there, just in case.
There’s a lot I haven’t figured out about WP, but I’m impressed with the classiness of the featured blogs on Freshly Pressed. Very different from Xanga’s front page. I’m finding out how to do what I want, like follow comment responses, etc. I’m following about 15-20 transplanted Xangans, and I like being able to plug blogs from other places (Blogger, Tumblr) into the feed, and that clicking on a blog opens another tab.
That sums it up nicely. Are you sure we can’t send private messages? I could swear I almost stumbled into sending one by accident but I’m unsure how I did it.
@distractedbyzombies - From what I can tell, private messaging requires a plug-in and is only available on wordpress.org.
I have a new blog over at WordPress too. whatdayisit2b is the name. I also have a private blog there. You can add a Widget and put a way for people to link to your blog. I am still very unsure of everything else but if Xanga does go away…at least I have another blog site to go to…even if I don’t care for it as much as I do Xanga.
I find it interesting how quickly I’m settling in at wordpress.
@onestepcloserto_perfection - thanks for the mini. I love you on wordpress, because your blog doesn’t go to my iPad in script. I never understood why it did that on Xanga. I’m sure it’s my fault, somehow. But you’re so easy to read now I LOVE IT!!!@randaness - I’m kinda wondering when you’re going to blog over there!!! Or here. Because I fear I’ll lose track of you in the Great Xanga Crash of 2013, if it happens. If it doesn’t I think I’m fine either way, pledge or don’t pledge, because I recently paid for Premium. So whatevs. @simplysuzu - follow me, and then I’ll see you, and then I’ll follow you. Otherwise I could just type in your name on WP, I suppose, but I’m notoriously bad about remembering to do stuff like that. I have a 10 second attention span. @Thatslifekid - yay!!! I saw your pulse! Click on my blog and follow me and I’ll follow you right back. @Roadkill_Spatula - opening another tab bothered me at first, but now I love it. I feel like I can do a lot of things at once. @distractedbyzombies - I am not sure. I really have no idea what I’m doing. But I have an adventurous spirit!! @myseniormoments - yes, my thoughts exactly. @doahsdeer - I know, right? me too.
@chronic_masticator - I might have dreamed it then. This situation has weaved its way into my subconscious!
@ordinarybutloud - I discover something new every day.