I too want to change my blogging platform. This blog is going to be three in March, and it is really time to move. Although I've really enjoyed blogging here till now, and the support I've got from the Userland forum, it is stagnating as a platform. It's sad that very few of the tools that make blogs so rich and yet easy to do, are possible easily with Radio. Just some examples - I want to use Performancing to blog, I want audio and video blog facilities, I want more control over spam in comments and trackbacks.

Three concerns I have about moving - I'll lose all my comments and trackbacks as there seems to be no way of transferring them from Radio - that's a bummer because a lot of value in my posts actually resides in the conversations they evoke. Second - I'll lose permalinks to lots of my posts that have been quoted elsewhere. But its been done by bloggers everywhere - so what the heck. It just means that I have to keep it blogged ! And three - my readers will have to subscribe to new RSS feeds - which in some ways will tell me something about where my blogging is headed.

Its just too hard and too time-consuming for me to take this on myself and hack templates and iron out design issues. I am looking for someone who can set up and design a website for my company and my blog - am not sure which should lead - my leaning is towards my blog somehow :). I have the urls explore-research.com and dinamehta.com which I'd want to use. I'd like to use Wordpress or Movable Type because both seem to offer great flexibility and allow so many features and plugins. I've been playing a lot with MT and Wordpress - I like them both. Has anyone done a comparison between the two ?

My biggest breakthrough was that I was able to export this Radio Userland blog into an MT space, huge thanks to Bob who has shared a step by step procedure to convert from Radio to Wordpress. Once the posts are in MT, it's easy to transfer them to Wordpress.

If you're interested, and are on-the-ball with these technologies, do write to me, or drop in a comment. I've a rough budget for this but would love to have your views on how much I should expect to pay.

1:14:22 PM    comment []  trackback []

This is cool - Adrants reports that the Amsterdam Tourism Board is leveraging bloggers for promotion - its a neat neat idea I think. Is the Indian Tourism Board listening? [thanks Vamsi, for the link].

"We've pretty much stopped with TV ads or radio ads or branded ads. It just wasn't worth it anymore. Online, there are just many more possibilities." That's a refrain we've hearing more on more over the next few years as marketers realize traditional advertising ain't all it's cracked up to be anymore. Amsterdam Tourism Board Internet manager Sebastian Paauw uttered that phrase when commenting on the Board's deal with BlogAds under which the Board, in connection with BlogAds, will send 25 bloggers to Amsterdam in exchange for ad space on their blogs. While the bloggers are not required to write anything about their trip, bloggers being bloggers, there will, no doubt, be a litany of posts covering their escapades during their five day stay."

12:26:05 PM    comment []  trackback []