Before Irma arrived to mess with us, I got a depressing reality check: according to Photobucket's account renewal date I have until November 16th to switch 13 years of images on PBW from their host service to Blogger in order to preserve all my blog pics before I delete my account with them. Which I might be able to do, if I devote a little time every day to uploading and coding, but I also have two other blogs with Photobucket-hosted images (Disenchanted & Co. and PBWindow) to redo.
Here are the number of published posts on the three blogs:
Paperback Writer: 4407
PBWindow: 1252
Disenchanted & Co.: 201
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Total: 5860
Not all of my PBW or Disenchanted & Co. posts have pics, but I've been pretty liberal with images on both. PBWindow was my photo blog so that's 100% pictures.
I've been blogging steadily since I started my very first blog waaaay back on November 3, 2001. Sixteen years on the internet; thirteen of them right here. But with all the headaches involved in forging ahead with blogging until I decide to retire (sometime in 2027, Lord willing) I am thinking about how long I want to (or actually can) hold on to all this. I do have all of my blogs backed up, btw, so I won't lose anything even if my Photobucket account goes poof.
Here are what I see as my options:
1. Close the account, let the pics vanish, and not do anything about them. PBWindow would become a complete void, but the written content would still be there on the others. This doesn't work for me because I'm more of a do-something gal.
2. Hang on for another year with Photobucket to have the time to manually switch everything on all three blogs over to Blogger. What gives me pause about this is that Google (which hosts all the pics on Blogger), could go the way of Photobucket and become insanely difficult to use, or up their annual pricing, or behave like jerks, and all my efforts would all be for nothing. Also, I've been burned by hosting services before, so I don't trust any of them.
3. Turn the archives of all the blogs into PDFs and make them free e-books. Possibly the fastest/easiest/cheapest route.
I'm inclined to go with door#3, so I did a test run with Disenchanted & Co., resizing the pics and making it more readable, and it took me about two hours (I cut and paste every page of the blog into a Word document, and then turned it into a PDF with Adobe.) Then I did a cut and paste of one year of posts from PBWindow and converted them to a PDF, which was quicker (about 20 minutes.)
Since I already have my blogs backed up as Word documents, I can turn them all into PDFs right now, save them on my Google drive, and then go back and edit the e-books at my leisure. I have a bit more to think about, but I'll let you all know what I decide before I do anything drastic.
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Oh, I like option 3. I never thought of that.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what kind of traffic you get on the other two sites, but this might be a way to beef up traffic here by including it as a link inside the other two free books.
Moving and readjusting photos is a tedious job that only you can do to your liking. I suppose you could hire someone to do it, but in the end it would cost more than just renewing your subscription to Photobucket for another year.
It's all about money anymore. And that sucks. I downloaded all of my images from Photobucket into a .zip file a couple weeks ago. I just can't pay for one more thing and frankly, with all the ads and things, it's not like there's no money coming in for them. And I understand the problems associated with changing all the links over. It sucks.
ReplyDeleteLeaving the blog as 'a big void' would be okay if you put up some kind of disclaimer maybe stating that the previous images were removed. I don't know. And I'm a bit surprised that blogger doesn't have some option for downloading your own content.
#3 is a great idea.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! Even though I've been following you for years, I've only started to think about actually blogging since I now have a better focus of what I want to say, etc.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused though. If you don't like option 2 because Google owns Blogger, why do you trust Google Drive?
I work in a school system that has recently bought in to the Chromebook pitch and has all the students using Google Docs, Drive and Classroom.
As a mom, I find this a horrific invasion of my student's learning.
As a collaborator, I see many benefits.
As a person with a media background and degree, I see this going the way of television, where it will all be pay, or ransom.
Ironically, as a writer, I now have a Wordpress account. :D
JulieB/Julie Spahn
I don't trust Google Drive at all. They've already shut down my blog once without notice, which they later admitted was a computer error. I expect them to do the same at any moment.
DeleteIf I turn my blogs into e-books now that I keep backed up on my own drive and memory sticks, then no matter what Google does I'll always have a copy of the blogs (and the pictures on the blogs, which are going away when I shut down my Photobucket account in November.) I can then post them online somewhere outside Google if people still want access to the content.