Postcards From Across the Pond

Once again: I am moving. Once again: not physically. Once again: you shouldn’t really notice anything.

It seems only a few months ago that I moved this blog from Blogger to WordPress, and that’s because it was. The 15th of May is when I spent an inordinate amount of time and money moving this blog into WordPress.com to join all my others. I was pleased to have all my blogs under one roof, even though the added hosting and domain parking upped the yearly cost to over £550.

Then, a few weeks ago, I decided to take on the Horsham Harmony website.

It’s a WordPress website, so there was no learning curve, but I did think it best to pull it into my WordPress.com Empire. Only the site was on WordPress.org.

While I had heard of the ‘other’ WordPress, I had never looked into it and assumed that WordPress.com was the way to go because the well-meaning, unsolicited advice that had convinced me to go to WordPress.com had told me so. Still, I wanted to have proof, in case I was asked why I was moving their blog. So, I did some quick research and discovered I was, as usual, dead wrong.

Turns out that professional web developers prefer WP.ORG. Most of the reasons have to do with things that, currently, are not relevant to me—like setting up an on-line store—but one advantage was the price, which was free.

All you need is a hosting site (the article I was reading recommended BlueHost, and so do I, as they are brilliant) and, once you set up an account, you can host as many websites/blogs as you wish—with WordPress.org seamlessly added to it—at no extra cost. This was a no-brainer, so I set about, once again, upping virtual sticks and relocating.

I will not describe the process, except to say it took all of eight days. To be fair, that was all five blogs, and it took me three days to decide on a theme and move the first one. Once I got the hang of it, moving the other blogs only took a few hours each, but the tweaking and domain transfers still ate up a lot of time.

The result is: the sites are all accessed by the same URLs and they look pretty much the same as they always did, meaning visitors shouldn’t notice any difference. And for me, the yearly service charge went from over £550 to about £150, which was extremely satisfying.

Then, inexplicably, and at the exact time I updated the final changes to my final blog, my computer stopped connecting to the Internet.

I thought it was a minor issue, but a day later I was still wrestling with the issue and finding it difficult because I couldn’t get any on-line help from the Internet because connecting to the Internet was the issue. As a last resort, I did a Reset to Factory Settings. And this worked a treat, except I couldn’t open any Microsoft documents.

This was strange. I was able to log into my on-line account, but when I tried to open a document, I was prompted to log in again, and received an error message.

A full day—and three lengthy and ultimately fruitless on-line chats with the Microsoft help-desk—later, I decided to try a second Reset to Factory Settings, only the computer would not allow it.

Another day, and another series of lengthy and ultimately fruitless on-line chats with the Microsoft help-desk convinced me to simply give up and buy a new computer, which is what I did. I admit that was a bit extreme, but it solved the problem, and the new laptop has twice the storage of the old one, so it was a win-win, unless you factor in my bank account.

After all that, I was a bit shell-shocked and it took a while to recover. All is well now, however, and I am happy with the outcome…

…except for:

The reason I went to WordPress.com in the first place was so I could have a Subscribe to This Blog widget in the sidebar. WordPress.org, it turns out, does not have anything of the kind.

Oh, they have lovely add-ons that will do all that and then some, with bells, whistles, and assorted features that, apparently, will do your ironing and walk your dog for you, but you have to pay for it.

This is, I am discovering, the disadvantage of going with the FREE WordPress.org. Aside from the fact that their crappy interface is even more crappy than WordPress.com’s, they never pass up an opportunity to try to up-sell you. Basic forms, widgets, security, spam filters, step right up and get yours…for a price.

And so, while I am not averse to paying for a service, I am averse to paying a lot for a service that provides ten-times more than I need, just so I can have a simple Subscription Form. Which is why I had to resort to an inelegant work-around.

On the right-hand side of the page, you will see a notice saying, “Subscribe to Postcards. (Click Here)” That will open a page with a standard contact form on it. That form will come to my IN box where I will harvest the emails, put them in a list and manually send out an email when the blog is updated. This is the method I used 20 years ago when I first started Postcards.

I do not consider this progress.

If you have already subscribed, you will have already received one of those emails.

If you wish to subscribe, click the notice and send me your email.

If you have any doubts, be assured I will keep your emails safe and will provide a method for un-subscribing

I like to think that my Blog Empire will remain here for a good long time, but I am not making any promises.