I pruned a lot of old dead blogs, left some just because I liked them. If anyone knows of new blogs or blogs I don't list, please let me know.
Blogger has made some big changes in recent weeks -- I've held off commenting on them but after several weeks of blogging with the new functionality I've decided the "upgrade" is detestable. When I blockquote something, for example, and then hit ENTER to create a line, Blogger puts in a whole new set of [blockquote][/blockquote] that makes even more space. After I change the color of a quoted block of text Blogger also puts in needless color commands in the empty lines, creating unnecessary spaces between paragraphs and which have to be hand-pruned. Etc. On the whole the new blogging functions are clunkier and slower. Further, the new functionality doesn't give me the all-important ability to make tables -- I still have to input them by hand. Why?
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.
Is it possible to include the dates in the comment time-stamp? Not knowing if items were posted today or 3 days ago often drives me nuts...
ReplyDeleteDone, thanks! I didn't even realize you could do that.
ReplyDeleteMike,
ReplyDeleteHave you ever considered getting your own domain and switching over to Wordpress? I think you'll find the themes (templates) there will satisfy you and there are plenty of plugins for doing what you need (like making tables).
Of course, it's a bit more expensive, but US$10/year for a domain is fairly cheap, especially for a fairly high traffic blog like yours.
Expat, I've long considered it, but my readership is all here. I had a backup blog at Wordpress but deleted it the other day, going to rebuild it.
ReplyDeleteYou might take a sudden hit in traffic in starting up your own domain, but you have to think long term I guess.
ReplyDeleteI'm a big Wordpress fan with both my blogs running off the platform. 2-3-10 years into the future and I couldn't imagine running on Blogger or Wordpress.com.
Having complete control over the backend + content is a huge consideration for me.
I think it should be for anyone invested in the long haul too. One day Google decides to mess around with Blogger too much and what then?
You care for your pictures as you rightly should.
ReplyDeleteIn keeping up with the photo-galleries culture, why not an anthracite-colored background with black framing of the headlines, the headlines themselves and the whole text contrasted in various tone of grey to white ?
Try it off line and see how you like the suggestion.
I agree with the domain proponents...can't you use a domain with your existing blogger account?
ReplyDeleteDomain or no Domain, I would be lost without your fantastic blog. Thanks!
Second request. Can you re-style the "this person said..." line for the comments? For non-blogger members, it is only in bold, and since many folks quote by putting items in bold, it's not particularly differentiated...
ReplyDeleteI'm a big Blogger fan. Once you get a grip of it, it's fun to blog and tweak templates by oneself, even if there are occasional bugs. I've seen blogs with own domain constantly going down. Mine is like yours, a simple blogspot, and it's always on. And I designed it myself, but I'm quite good with HTML code. I usually use the pure code instead of relying on Blogger's tools. And hence I have a very stable design of every post. But I'm using the old editor. The new one sucks. However, there are plans to make Blogger more professional very soon. Everything inside (the interface) will massively change. Let's hope it will be good :)
ReplyDeleteJust a sidenote, the link color is the same as the blockquote color - a little confusing when scan reading.
ReplyDelete