Blogger beta wants to (up)date me
Blogger has been suffering severe hiccups lately due in part to the migration from the old Blogger to the new Google Blogger (eternal?) Beta. Many evenings, I cannot post to my blog due to some kind of system problems.

You have to wait for an invite to move your blog to the Beta. Yesterday, I got the invite.

Once moved, you can't go back. Ack.

I have hacked my Blogger blog a bit and incorporated a categorizing system (old Blogger does not have one) via del.icio.us. The hack is a Greasemonkey script (by Johan at Ecmanaut) that's integrated into the Blogger edit screen and gives me a Tags field, which ends up as a del.icio.us entry with a couple of clicks. It's very slick but doesn't work in the Blogger Beta world where they now have labels (read "tags") for your entries. Can I convert my tags to labels easily? (If you're interested in Blogger hacks, check out Fresh Blog.)

Second problem is my commenting system which uses Haloscan because Haloscan has a trackback feature and old Blogger doesn't (not sure if trackbacks are in Beta or not).

Problem 3 is I host this blog on my own server via ftp. That will still work in the Beta but I will miss some cool dynamic publishing features. Changing will mean a new URL and I am not clear as to whether Beta will suck up my old entries if I switch to hosting at Google Blogger.

Although switching to the Blogger Beta is not compulsory today, word in the blogosphere is that it will be in a matter of weeks. I need a plan of attack.

• Read Blogger Beta help or at least the parts about migration.
• Start a new Blogger Beta blog and play around with it.
• Check out Blogger Buzz, Google's blog for Blogger.
• Monitor the Blogger Help Group.
• Backup my blog content on my server before the switch.
  

I'm sure you'll note the switchover when it comes along.



- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 3:06 PM [to Del.icio.us]