The Blog Has Moved

Many have been clamoring for a new blog post, but first some house keeping is in order.

I have moved my blog from a rented server that we (I and my brother Daryl) must maintain.  While our own server certainly offers more autonomy, I have drunk the Google Kool-ade.  I am deeply entrenched in the Google/Android world and have found that Blogger just works better and easier than having my blog on Wordpress.  It integrates everything nicely and eliminates all the maintenance and upgrading issues encountered when maintaining your own server.

Moving the blog was a multi-step process.  First I exported the blog from Wordpress in XML format.  Then I ran it through a process to convert it the XML code fro Wordpress to Blogger format.  I then imported the XML file into Blogger.  Everything came across fine except for photos.  Most of the early photos were not copied properly due to their setup on Wordpress, and all the later photos were included but Blogger still pointed to the files on the old server.  I FTP'd all the photos to my laptop and am currently in the process of uploading all the photos to Blogger so that everything is in one place.

Photos are another reason for making this change.  All photos taken with my phone are automatically uploaded to Google Plus, and including them in a blog is a simple process.

Setting up the simple URL or blog.richardlafferty.com to access the new blog took a little work.  GoDaddy is my domain registrar and the entries there point anything addressed to richardlafferty.com to the AZNB server.  I had to add entries there to redirect blog.richardlafferty.com to the Blogger server.  Behind the scenes on Google's server there is another redirect taking place.  It hides the fact that the real URL for my blog is "laffertytravelsandlife.blogspot.com".  Entering that URL directly will get you to my blog as well, but Google will sort of mask it from you.  It took some stumbling around and Daryl's help to figure this part out.

There is a pretty good chance I will eventually move my Gallery from the AZNB servers to Google as well.  That will come later.  For now, our photos are still in the same place as always.