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Sunday
Dec032006

A question for readers: Advice re: Blogger.com beta switch?

A quick question for the Blogger--savvy among you: Do you know of any problems switching from the original version to the new beta? There are some nice features I've been asking to provide (e.g., labels/categories, label feeds, and comment feeds), but I thought I'd get a heads-up first. Thanks!

(And yes, I realize it's passe using Blogger instead of running my own customized blog from matthewcornell.org, but as long as it's not getting in the way of my message, it's not a priority right now.)

Reader Comments (9)

The major improvement for me has been much quicker photo uploads. Sometimes, I am asked for my password which annoys me but otherwise, the transition was seamless.

December 3, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterAnonymous

Thanks, Carrie and Kris.

December 3, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterMatthew Cornell

I've recently switched and found that there were very few problems.

The switch itself was painless, but I have encountered the odd 'tiny' niggle occasionally. For instance, yesterday when I went to add some widget to my template, (In firefox) the button would not allow 'accept' to finish the change. When I tried in MS explorer it allowed me to complete.

The extra's i.e tags, easy template manipulation etc more than make up for the problems though.

Now if only there were a few more templates available...

December 3, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterAnonymous

Appreciate the comment, Alastair. I also liked your article on trying out Mark Forster's work - His book is on my "candidates" pile. Cheers!

December 3, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterMatthew Cornell

It seems that you're using a pretty standard blogger template, so you shouldn't find the switch too bad. Me, I made the switch, and then hemmed and hawed about actually going all the way and moving to the new layout. That required me to let go of my html tweaking of the template and start again. That said, the new layout manager is awesome, and I like it alot better than beating on pure html.

Also, just before I did the switch, I started using Windows Live Write to create posts with screenshots. After the switch, that didn't work. I did eventually get it to work again, but it's not a trusted system, i.e., the last few times I had posts with screenshots, I couldn't get the photos to upload properly. The text only posts worked though.

Other than that, and the fact that I keep having to log in (it refuses to remember me, but it might be a firefox problem for me), I'm enjoying the beta.

December 4, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterAnonymous

Matt,
Further to my earlier comment, I think some of the niggles are due to some Greasemonkey scripts I had running in Firefox. When I turned them off, the 'new post' page sorted itself back out in Blogger Beta.

December 4, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterAnonymous

Thanks very much for the template and other info, Michelle. I'm getting much more comfortable with the switch.

Alastair: I appreciate the update.

December 4, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterMatthew Cornell

The biggest problem I've found with the switch to beta is that the auto-ping doesn't work unless you reinstigate it.

I had to go to all of my social networking and such sites and re-ping each one manually to get them to recognize the beta.

I wish I had known this before I lost a lot of readers from those sites (technoratti, digg, etc) because I wasn't listed as having updated for 38 days when I noticed the error.

Best of luck!

December 6, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterAnonymous

Thanks for the pointer, Whimspiration. That's a good one to know about.

December 7, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterMatthew Cornell

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