Earlier this week
another of the most popular Salon bloggers, political satirist World O' Crap, bailed out
and moved to a new blog host. The Salon community is trying to hang together,
using a Blogger blog,
until we find out what the gang at Salon.com have
in mind, now they've announced that no new Salon Radio Userland Blogs
will be created until a new blog policy has been established. But
defections have been rampant, with the number of active (daily posting)
Salon Blogs down from a peak of over 200 to fewer than 50 today.
I don't want to move, but a lot of readers have been complaining again
about slow page loading times and iffy performance on the comments
server. The big problem with moving now is giving up the enormous and
hard-won Google rank I've achieved where I am now e.g. #1 for "save the
world", #1 for "natural enterprise", #1 for "generosity economy", #1
for "model intentional community", #2 for "business innovation", #2 for
"boycott list", #6 for "wisdom of crowds", #6 for "personal knowledge
management", #7 for "gift economy".
A related problem is creating some continuity for my tables of
contents -- the carefully maintained lists of nearly 1500 articles on
54
different subjects I've been maintaining since I began this blog just
over three years ago. These tables of contents are heavily used -- many
of my articles are now 'required reading' for some university courses,
and the tables of contents are how many new readers orient themselves
to my work and archives. I try to make my writing durable, so articles
will be as topical and valuable ten years later as they were when they
were written, so just abandoning the old articles and starting fresh on
a new blog is not an option for me.
Including backups and images, the blog now takes
up over 300MB on the Salon server.
If I were to migrate existing content to a new server, I presume I would lose all the reader
comments, which reside on a separate, Salon Radio Userland
comments server.
And
of course migration creates a problem for the thousands of readers who
have blogrolled or linked to me (and my Technorati ranking), or who
subscribe to my RSS feed (via aggregrators like Bloglines or e-mail RSS
services like Rmail).
*Sigh* So much to think about. It's as messy as moving from one house to another.
So I need the advice of those who know far more about blog technology
and Google rankings than I do. I have some domains I could use to host
the blog, one of which, howtosavetheworld.ca,
currently automatically redirects to this blog (it's a much easier URL
to give people than the URL you see in your address window). So:
- What would be the most painless way to move all my content
over to a new, personal domain, so I no longer need to be dependent on
companies (both Salon and Radio Userland) which have been losing blog market
share and, I fear, might decide to exit the blogosphere entirely?
- Is
there some way to do this without losing my Google rankings and forcing RSS subscribers to re-subscribe to the new URL?
- What's
the best, simple tool for hosting the blog that also accommodates my (currently handmade)
tables of contents?
- Is there any way to salvage and migrate readers' comments as well?
I
keep hoping that Salon will come to the rescue, and keep the existing
URLs if they switch to a new blog tool, or somehow otherwise make the
migration automatic or easy. Or that Radio Userland will merge with one
of the newer, growing blog tools and look after the redirections for
me. But it's time for me to be realistic, and at least be ready to move
if it becomes necessary.
Your advice would be appreciated.
Please be gentle -- I'm not an expert in any technology, and I'm
looking for a simple solution. I just want to write stuff that people
find useful, and have people be able to find it easily. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
