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- Blog Overhaul and Blogger to WordPress – five years on - July 31, 2024
- Ricoh Theta X review - July 17, 2024
I have just completed a major overhaul of the blog as well have some follow up about the move from Google Blogger to WordPress.
Blog Update
Until recently I was not aware how slow my older posts were to load. I built this WordPress site while living in Japan where I had true gigabit internet and when WordPress itself ran faster with no cap on image size.
Prior to 2021 my ride reports photos were all uploaded their full size and set to display in high resolution. This worked fine with fast Japanese internet and when WordPress could handle large files.
Revisiting ride reports with my pathetic Aussie broadband I discovered all my older ride reports were painfully slow to load and many timed out unable to display the photos.
So I have spent the last month revisiting all 92 ride reports on this blog and adjusting the display properties of hundreds of photos. The older ride reports should now all display much more reliably and the ride reports from 2021 onwards will look better. Many of those photos were posted in a ‘wide’ format where WordPress was digitally enlarging rather than using a higher resolution. I have fixed this and those images are now displayed correctly without impacting too much on load times. See below.
I still have a few ride reports that remain to be transferred from Google Blogger and am working on those to round out what is the biggest overhaul of the blog since moving it to WordPress.
Blogger to WordPress five years on
I’ve written two posts about my move from Blogger to WordPress before and won’t rehash how difficult moving files was but a brief recap is needed.
This blog was hosted on Blogger for 13 years. I had installed a custom made template and it already had the WordPress look with menus and slider images on the landing page. I decided to move for three reasons. 1. Blogger stopped supporting third party editors and I hated the built in editor. 2. I wanted to be able to display my photos in higher quality and have support for 360 images or other content. 3. Google have a habit of shutting down platforms that do not make them money and rumors were circulating (which seem to have been wrong).
Initially I setup WordPress on Amazon (AWS) which was fast and cheap but doing everything in Linux became bothersome and I had no support. I then moved to managed hosting with Namecheap who provides excellent support with people to fix problems for me but cost a little more.
On Namecheap I soon realised the entry level hosting was not fast enough so I went up a level. Then I realised I had no backup and to do that with such a huge blog (now 35GB) I needed to move up again to get more server space. So what initially was cheap hosting on AWS has grown in cost however this blog is one of very few hobbies I still have so I don’t mind the cost but am pointing out if you are thinking to move then factor in speedy hosting with support and double the size you think is needed to allow for backup and future growth.
I am happy with the WordPress editing and blog creation process. It doesn’t offer offline writing of posts which I enjoyed on Blogger via third party software but when Google dropped support for that I struggled with the built in online editor so much that alone convinced me to make the move to WordPress.
Despite slow downs and image size caps WordPress still allows me to display my photos much better than Blogger so that desire also has been met and being a photo centric blog in this age of video everything I think that also by itself makes the move worth it.
Lastly I am very happy that I have full control over my content. Blogger already had lost over 100 of my photos when they discontinued Picasa and moved all the Blogger content to Google Photo servers and that made me realise free platforms cannot be relied on to safely store things or have backups of my content.
That especially applies to free platforms like Facebook and YouTube. Every month I read about someone who has lost their content or followers. Very recently the well known Aussie rider On My Bike had her Facebook account hacked and lost everything. If you are not using 2FA everywhere then you should be however that is still no guarantee of data being safe on free platforms.
Very happy I made the move to WordPress but it has been a lot of work and if you are time poor then staying on Blogger would be best. This blog only exists to be my travel diary and what I post only needs to please me, however given I have too much spare time I enjoy tinkering with WordPress and how that allows me to share photos in high quality which might occasionally inspire others just as how other people sharing their rides has inspired me.
Thanks again Warren for all the work on your blog and inspiration it has given us.
Thanks Simon