blog changes

Are you wondering what is going on with my blog(s)?

A somewhat brief history of my blogging. 

My first blog was an iWeb blog from Apple. I liked it and thought it was easy to make look good. I didn't like that text could not be searched and non-Apple people could not find my blog easily. 

I switched to TypePad because all the cool kids were doing it. I learned to make style adjustments and make the blog my own. 

When I started LinneCards I had my own hosted site. I looked into Moveable Type but it was expensive. I switched to Wordpress and had help with the transition. Over the years, I changed the look of the blog by changing the header and adding widgets. It seemed to serve me well except for the updates I had to make. Since I had several blogs, I had to spend too much time updating. Way too much time trying to make things easier for myself.

This year, I kept hearing how wonderful SquareSpace they was sponsoring most of the podcasts I was listening to. I decided to switch but still have some time left on my self-hosted site. I thought I could eliminate my Zenfolio site and just use the SquareSpace blog to host photos. I decided to go for it and set up my site. I thought it would take a few weeks to get it moved over but it was easier than I thought. There are fewer options than Wordpress which I missed at first. But I started to like the cleaner look. The move had a few glitches but mostly it went OK. Most of my images were too wide and needed adjusting. I figured I could fix them a bit each week.

I noticed that I lost quite a few subscribers when I moved over to SquareSpace. I wonder why and wonder if they will eventually come back. I know I don't really mind if no one looks at my stuff. But it is nice to be acknowledged. 

Now SquareSpace has rolled out version 6. I don't have to move but I can. It is strange that it is not automatic but they explained that version 6 is template based and you had to choose a template first. I really liked the template I had in version 5 and nothing was similar. I tried a few before I found one I liked. It is minimal. But that is good. Again, I had some glitches moving the blog over. My galleries did not transition. And when I tried to set up new galleries, I had loads of problems. I finally got them to work when I limited each gallery to just 12 images. It is probably a good thing to do anyway. 

The reason for switching now was to move my Zenfolio stuff over to SquareSpace. It turns out that I cannot without added cost. More than what am spending at Zenfolio. So the photos I take and post for Special Olympics will stay at Zenfolio though I did downgrade to a cheaper plan. 

A couple of items in the plus column for SquareSpace 6 is that I do not need to resize my photos and it has responsive design so the mobile versions are built it. SquareSpace is working out the bugs and I am learning how to use the platform. 

Now if I could figure out how to get a search box in here and maybe a directory of monthly posts, I would be pretty happy. A subscription link would be nice too.