Showing posts with label Migration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Migration. Show all posts

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Advantages of migrating from old (classic) Blogger account to New (formerly beta) Blogger Account even if you retain classic templates

Background

I occasionally check the statcounter statistics to check how people are finding my blogs, and found that this post Digi D'House: An almost paperless Office Part II were being found by surfers searching for D'House (the correct name for the building), but the original post Digi D'House: An almost paperless office were not being found because the name of the building was given wrongly as D'Block to me and the original title of the first post was "D'Block: An almost paperless building". The URL was then

http://enviromansays.blogspot.com/2006/11/digi-d-block
-almost-paperless-office.html

Now that blog is still using the old (classic) Blogger template although I have migrated the Blogger account to the New Blogger (formerly beta) account. I have already noticed that with the new account and new Blogger template, the individual post page URL (permalink) remains the same even if we changed the post title and/or date, but do not know if blogs still using the old (classic) template will have the same advantage (it is an advantage to me because if the permalink changed, then existing inbound links and links in search engine result pages will become dead links). I was sorely tempted to change the post title, but was afraid the permalink may changed. So I decided to test it on an unimportant post in an unimportant blog to see if changing the title will change the permalink. I found that it did not, so I had the courage to change the title of the above post from "Digi D'Block...." to "Digi D'House...." and confirmed that the permalink (URL) did not change.

Advantages of migrating your old (classic) Blogger account to the New Blogger (formerly beta) account even if you keep the classic template

So now, I have discovered the following advantages of migrating your account even if you keep the original classic template of some or all your blogs:

  • Individual post page URL (permalink) remains the same even when you change the post title and/or date

  • You can label (categorise or tag) your posts even if you retain the classic template. The labels will appear at the bottom of the post, although you will not be able to put a list of labels in the sidebar (unless you are prepared to do it manually yourself)

  • When you change the settings, you no longer have to republish

  • Posts get published faster
  • .

Anyone knows of anymore advantages, please put them in the Comments section.

I know of one person (20 sticky posts) who claimed himself to be a technophobe (a person who dislikes or avoids new technology) whom I expected to be the last person to migrate did migrate before the so called "mandatory migration" (don't know if it is going to take place) and even before I did, found the migration to be smooth as fast and problemless(as was my experience). There were no horror stories of not being able to see the blogs in the Dashboard, unable to publish, upload pictures or edit, etc that were frequently "heard" on the Google Blogger Help group.

Disclaimer: This post is not meant to encourage you to migrate if you have any misgivings. There may be unexpected changes (pleasant or unpleasant). For example, in my blog Enviroman Says, the sticky post "Environmental cartoon" used to be a small image which fitted into the main column of my template then, but the text were unreadable, and I am forced to put a notice asking readers to click on the cartoon to enlarge it. After migration, the cartoon was displayed in its enlarged format, which is a bonus because the text then become readable without having to click on the cartoon. However, I am forced to change template to accomodate the larger cartoon. Instead of the Ramani's 3 column Minima template which fits readers with 800x600 screen resolutions, I am forced to change to the Denim fixed 3 column template modified by Stavanger, and even then, I have to change the main and sidebars width to accomodate the width of the cartoon. See post New Blogger (formerly beta) templates modified to 3 column by Stavanger, at the bottom of the post.


You migrate at your own risk.