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Sunday 9 May 2010

Decisions decisions, which one do I choose?

I am going to have to make some fairly tough decisions soon regarding which blogging platform I am going to reside on permanently. At the moment I seem to be all over the place, and have practically as many blogs on the go as I have social networking sites! Each one has to have a separate username and password, and being of the ‘muddle headed, lousy memory’ type, I am constantly having to move from one persona to the other, causing me to have to keep a very large writing pad handy just so that I can check on which username is for which blog. I have even got one or two blogs on the go which are simply used for testing themes etc out!

It’s a fact that since I bought my first computer several years ago, I have done more writing than I ever did previously. User names, passwords, email settings, router settings, notes, ideas for blogs, ideas for feedback, notes for my how-to’s over on Windows Live, URL’s I need to remember, the list is endless.

The decision about where exactly to keep my blog, both this one and my more personal one essentially hinges on what if anything has been changed in our Windows Live Spaces in the new Wave 4 updates. Windows Live has been my main blogging site since it first saw light of day, but it is now beginning to look worn and jaded when compared to other blogging sites.

Living with Live blogIt badly needs some new themes. Some new layouts. New up to date modules for twitter and Facebook for example. New fonts being made available such as Segoe UI.  It has served me well all these years and I have made many friends on there during that time, so I would be sad to leave it all.  I love how it tends to be wider than other blog site themes are, its about 720 pixels for the writing area.  However, it is not possible to use your own customised header on there to give just one example unless you are really a dab hand at HTML (which I am not,)  and  in fact there are lot’s of things you can’t do with your blog to personalise it on Windows Live.

I wandered over to try out Blogger some time back, and at first I thought it wasn’t for me as there were only  a few default templates available. Then I tried doing a search for  ‘Free Blogger Templates’ and wow! There are absolutely loads and loads of different blogger templates available, most converted from Wordpress.org by willing people! 

Blogger Neither here nor there blogI love my Grungy blog on Blogger because I love the whole Grunge look. If I had the know how, I would make it wider in the writing area, but that’s all I would alter. I have changed the fonts used in it already by simply changing the fonts in the Edit Template feature available on Blogger. Not that I know anything about HTML mind you. But those who convert these themes are usually pretty helpful to any users who want to change things around and do some customization.

My other more serious blog on Blogger has a lovely template  that makes it look ‘serious’ but also a little different as well. It has a ‘splash’ of what appears to be an ink stain behind the writing area which scrolls as you read the blog post. Yet being simply black and white it manages to still look business like whilst still managing to look different from the rest. I changed the fonts in that template as well.

Blogger tittle tattle blogThen there’s my techie blog on Wordpress. At the moment I am using one of the new themes for that called ‘Under the Influence’ (very apt name for me actually!) and although you can do some customisation with this theme, you can’t alter the fonts used without paying for the Custom CSS upgrade. It’s the best of the new themes for me at the moment as its one of the few where you can easily alter the width of the writing area. (which I did.) I like a fairly wide writing area. The thing I don’t like about it are the tiny tiny fonts used for the Widgets in the sidebar. You can hardly read them!

Wordpress tittle tattle blogTo add to all the others there’s also my Wordpress ‘Diary type blog.’  For now, although I would have preferred to use the new ‘Twenty Ten’ theme for this, I simply couldn’t get Live Writer to sync with it properly and that ability is a huge deciding factor for me when choosing a theme or template. Windows Live Writer has to be able to fully sync with the whole theme.  So I am using that old Wordpress stalwart ‘Vigilance’ for that particular blog. It does allow you to use your own header and background which is something, and Live Writer had no problems syncing with that, despite the fact that they are fairly similar. Go figure.

Diary type blog on WordpressI suppose for all of us bloggers, its about making that blog page look unique so that is looks different to everyone else's even if there are thousands using exactly the same theme as you. So being able to customise any theme offered so that you can make that theme or template your very own tends to play a very big part in any decision we bloggers make regarding which blogging site we use.

So, decisions decisions! I shall have to wait until the Windows Live Wave 4 updates are available before I come to any firm decision about where my blog finally resides, but it has to be done! I know this, I can’t keep them all on the go! It’s doing my head in, and anyway I’m quickly running out of usernames and passwords!

TG