Looking into WordPress
...for a possible new home for this blog, to get the word out to more readers. I won't be adding new posts here for the time being, just at WordPress, but I will still try to respond to Comments here as health permits (which has been a bit difficult since last Spring).
I wish you a profitable Great Fast when it arrives next month!
I wish you a profitable Great Fast when it arrives next month!
posted by me at 10:27 AM
4 Comments:
Why do you feel wordpress is better than blogger?
JNORM888
Hi JNORM! Welcome!
Actually I'm still just testing wordpress. But the reasons I decided to included:
--Better Google results: ISTM Google browses Blogger archive pages more than individual post pages, so posts are harder to find, whereas it browses WordPress post pages as well as archive, tag, and category pages. My idea is to get the word out, make it as easy as possible to find, right?
--Either Blogger doesn't track tags Blogger-wide, or I haven't figured out how to do it right, but it's very easy at WordPress.
--Blogger is very moody; some days it just doesn't pay to try and make it work. I know it's free, but come on, people at Blogger, have you no self-respect?
--WordPress's autosave function is almost always "on," and you always get the current version of the post you're editing, rather than an older one from your web cache. Not so with Blogger, often to my frustration, since some of my posts here at EOC are somewhat involved, shall we say!
--Either free Blogger doesn't offer reader stats (hits, search terms, click-throughs, click-froms, etc.), or again, I haven't found them yet, but again, very easy at WordPress. Here I honestly don't know if anybody's seeing the message unless they Comment. Heck, even GeoCities was giving stats a decade ago, before blogs were so much a part of the 'scene'!
--WordPress is just more "fun" to work with as a blogger, more options and such for formats and posts. It feels like Blogger is like an Edsel to WordPress's - I won't say Cadillac, but how about a nice comfortable Chevy Impala!
--Often Blogger's server is unbelievably slow when trying to post or work with a blog.
--A blog owner can't edit Comments at Blogger.
--Commenters can do more with their comments, eg, formatting text in different ways, at WordPress. Blogger only allows bold, italics, and links, unless you know code, and Blogger Comments doesn't even accept alot of useful code; eg, this Comment started out as a bunch of bullet list-items.
--I really don't see how New Blogger is an improvement; Old Blogger worked better ISTM. Plus, I was one of those who had unrelated blogs yoked together when they forced the changeover on us without warning us. I spent six hours tearing my hair out before I was able to fix the problem. Since then I haven't been well-disposed toward Blogger anyway. Call it a grudge maybe; not nice, I know, but hey, God's not finished with me yet!
--How about the "This page contains both secure and nonsecure items" warning Blogger's commenting page always pops up? Now I'm getting petty, I know...!
--There's little to no Help at Blogger. Right or wrong, that just says to me they don't care.
--Sometimes Blogger makes changes in posts not accounted for by the coding; not always reliable!
--Is free Blogger even hooked into Del.ici.ous and stuff like that???
--Blogger's time and date clock on the post page almost always needs to be updated by hand. Reminds me of an old Apple I was once responsible for, that kept forgetting the time and date at every bootup, until we figured out it just needed a new battery! Another minor inconvenience, death by a thousand tiny bites....
Downsides about WordPress:
--I really like the white text / black background option here; I chose it because I was thinking of words about Orthodoxy as a Light-in-darkness sort of thing. (That's why Patristic quotes are in gold, btw -- the most Light!) I couldn't find a similar format at free WordPress I liked; I ended up with a fairly plain format. I'm a radio guy, but I'm not completely visually ignorant!
--Free WordPress seems to give and take away features without much thought for their real usefulness to free bloggers trying to reach people, like subscriber stats, since that's how alot of people read blogs now, without even going to the website and registering as hits. Again, free is free, but give us a small break, eh? It's not an ego thing, but Mission effectiveness. (OK, it's also a small ego thing....)
--Apparently if I'm logged on to WordPress when I comment on another blog, they can see my email, and I don't want that, so I have to log out and Comment as Anonymous. Inconvenient.
--More spam to sort through.
--I remember contacting Help at WordPress once, and they never got back to me either, but their "knowledge base" or whatever you want to call it is at least easier to find stuff in than Blogger's.
So we'll see!
Have a good Fast.
Take care,
Leo Peter
Hi, I am an Anglican, Evangelical, Charismatic Christian working in Swansea, Wales (UK)looking more closely at the Eastern Orthodox Church having read "Becoming Orthodox" by Peter Gilquist. Have lots of questions. Any advice about who to write to?
Greetings, Looking for God, and welcome, and thanks for Commenting, as you did on the Feast of the Most Holy and Glorious Transfiguration of Our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ (6 Aug.)!
I took a quick look at your own blog, and it sounds exciting! As far as whom to write to, to ask questions, why not start with the author of BECOMING ORTHODOX himself? Fr. Peter Gillquist is Director of Missions and Evangelism for the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch's Archdiocese of North America, and reportedly may be reachable through their Contacts.
I have some more ideas here.
What about contacting the people involved with the Orthodox Studies program at the University of Wales Lampeter? Or even Metropolitan KALLISTOS (formerly Timothy Ware) himself, author of the English-language classic, The Orthodox Church, and a convert from the Church of England?
Your blog says there doesn't seem to be the Antiochian missionary presence in the UK that we have here. I can't swear to this, but it's possible the difference is very much due to the Evangelicals themselves here who began converting in large numbers in the '80s, and reaching out to other Evangelicals and Protestants in general. It's said our Antiochian Archdiocese is now half converts, and two-thirds of their clergy are. So don't lose heart!
I could be corrected on this, but I also believe there are a growing number of Protestant converts in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), both in North America and in Britain. What you may have there is a somewhat larger local-convert phenomenon than it seems, just spread out between two or more jurisdictions. So maybe you can contact these folks about questions.
I hope this helps.
--Leo Peter
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