Towse: views from the hill

Blogger comments have been up for eight hours or so … and already I have spammish content.

Why?

I’ve enabled comment moderation, which really doesn’t suit me, but I don’t like wading through the gunk and you, gentle readers, shouldn’t have to.

I’ll find some alternative, but for now, there will be a delay in comments until I’ve deleted the obviously-not-interested-in-sal’s-musings comments.

Tomorrow I’ll go through and delete those that are already in place.

*sigh*

Between having to move the blog over to Blogger and having Haloscan spittle a bit and go to for-pay mode, I seem to have lost all of my Haloscan comments. Alas. They can still be found back at the old site for the blog but for now I’m swopping to Blogger comments … yet again.

Explanation: As per my note on 03Feb, I’m having to move the blog over to Blogger, albeit with a custom name that will host at towse.com. Blogger sez it’s too painful for them to support FTP blogging anymore. And so it goes. … [end Explanation] Let’s see how this works.

My blogging world is shredding around me.

First up, the folks who handled my comments said I’d have to pay for the service. Um. No.

While I was wondering what commenting service to use in lieu, someone/something else seems to have picked up the commenting. (Waaah?) But I still need to find a permanent vendor.

While I was still wondering what commenting service to use, I got a note from Blogger/Google saying that folks like me who FTP their blogs to their Web sites are using too many tech resources/time/help and they are shutting down the FTP service. I can either move over to Blogger and their services or find another vendor.

*sigh*

If you’re wondering why the slowdown in blog posts, it’s just me pondering my future. The blog will roll on, with a different manner of posting and a different mode of handling comments.

Soon.

I’ll probably freeze this blog in place and start another from scratch, which is a Royal Pain, but the easiest way to handle the transition.

(I’ve always been the tortoise when it comes to making decisions like this.)

As I mentioned a wee bit ago, there’s a fine line between conscientious and compulsive, between wanting all your blocks set up in a straight line and not being able to function unless your blocks are set straight.

That being said, those of you hooked up to the RSS feed will notice that I’m fiddling with old posts — oh, not posts that go back to forever, just ones that go a little bit back, say to when I swopped over to the !Beta Blogger or a maybe an itsy bit further.

See, when I swopped over to the !Beta, I picked up tag functionality.

I’ve been taking a look at the tags I’ve created and used (and the spots where I probably should’ve used tags if I want to be consistent and you know how us compul^H^H^H^Hnscientious people are) and …

Rather than comment on each and every post I fiddle with to say that I’m playing around with the tags, assume that that’s what’s different unless I specifically say so.

‘Kay?

Muy muchas gracias.

Update: Done. No, really. I didn’t make all the changes that I could’ve, but I made enough that I feel better about the labels. Wish I knew enough about the Blogger internals that I could’ve changed “url” to “URL” without having to find all the “url” labels, delete them, then create a “URL” label and add that label back to all the posts that needed it. Seems if you have a “tHisTagIsSTUPID” tag, you can’t have a “THisTAgisSTUPID” tag. Blogger just won’t let you. There must be some easy way to change your mind and decide all your “city” tags need to be “urban” instead. I’ll keep poking around.

Update 2:You can edit all the posts with a given label [note to self: need to remember that Blogger calls tags "labels" because they have a different feature that they call "tags"]. You still need to delete label “a” from all posts so-labeled and then add label “b” to all the posts.

Moved to beta Blogger last night after setting up a trial account and making sure the FTP to my Web site worked. It did.

Then I had to wait until I got another “how’d you like to move to beta Blogger” note. Eric Case, in that video linked to in a prior post, explained that Blogger was offering the switchover to just a percentage of classic Blogger users at a time soze not to overwhelm the systems. Each time I logged on, it was a tossup whether I’d get the offer or not. Once I decided to move over, it took something like three or four log-ons before I got the offer again.

I moved yesterday after much shall-I shan’t-I because Blogger was overwhelmed and my posts they would not post. (Oh, my. That dreaded tick-round-and-round-and-round at 0% completion.) We are told upfront that once you transition, you can’t go back.

Another Yo! Blogger folk! You know that blog you maintain that’s supposed to give heads-up about troubles with Blogger and posting issues and downtime and all? You really should use it.

In amongst the cautionary “make sure that your FTP will work if you don’t host with Blogspot before you make the transition” messages, Blogger forgot to mention that Blog This! doesn’t work with the beta system and they’ve been “working on it” since September. Excuse me? How hard can this be? Until they get it fixed I’m back to the old save-a-link-write-a-post method.

Turns out the post to Blogger from Picasa won’t work either. They’re working on it.

More whines to follow, I’m sure. I’m an old-fashioned girl and change is so difficult, isn’t it?

Update: whine: I added a “label” when I was writing this post. Nothing showed on the post except the label, the title, and the whodunnit information. I re-edited and took the label off. Nothing showed for the post except the title and the whodunnit information. I went in again and took out some code I’d had in my classic Blogger that related to “fullpost” and voila!

You know? I’m a teeny bit more geared to all this stuff than someone who hasn’t been playing with code since the 70s and it took me a bit to figure out the problem. How is all this affecting Aunt Eunice?

Update 2: Eric’s right. They’ve got rid of that annoying 0%. Unfortunately, contrary to promise, they can still have the annoying round-and-round-and-we’re-working-on-it-round.