Oct 26 2007
Moving away from Livejournal
The time has finally come to move away from LiveJournal. I don’t think the move will be as simple as all that, however. So I thought it best to explain why I’m going through the pain anyway.
The advantages of LiveJournal
So there will be a load of stuff that I’ll miss. In fact, so much that I’ll probably stick around there for a while. There are still a bunch of communities that I read fairly regularly, though I am not an active participant to any degree.
The biggest thing LJ has going for it is the friends page. Being able to subscribe to other people’s password-protected blogs in a really seamless way. So I’ll continue to lurk.
The shortcomings of LiveJournal
Of course, I am moving. And there are a whole bunch of reasons, not all of which will seem very meaningful. But I promise they all add together to make it feel worthwhile for me to escape.
Obviously, there’s the technological side. All those facilities that Six Apart have been dragging their feet over since they bought out LiveJournal? Well, they’re available to me now. Categories; pingbacks and trackbacks; proper spam filtering; and even getting to add javascript to pages.
And there’s a wee bit of aesthetics involved too. I can go mad with the themes and the style sheets! I can properly separate different parts of my blogging for those not interested in everything I do.
And there’s also a wee ethical consideration. Cos try as they might pretend to be a cutting-edge forward-thinking outside-the-box company, LiveJournal’s owners have demonstrated repeatedly that this is not the case. Instead, they’ve demonstrated that their morals are completely at odds with that image and with the majority of their users (and paying customers). I could have paid for a full account but I don’t want to give them any money. So I’ll leave instead.
I’m not gone yet
I’ll continue to get this place set up, piece by piece, and meanwhile the blogging I do on LiveJournal will reduce in volume. I don’t know when it’ll all be done, but I’ll let everyone who’s interested know in good time.