rusty_halo

I’ve been debating what to do with this blog.

For two years, I’ve had a self-hosted WordPress installation that crossposts automatically to LiveJournal, DreamWidth, InsaneJournal, and JournalFen. I set this up because I finally got fed up with LiveJournal’s greed and incompetence.

If I was doing this from scratch, I would have just set up a paid DreamWidth account and used it to crosspost to the other sites. DreamWidth didn’t exist when I initially set this up, and then they were unproven. By now, though, they’ve earned my respect. They are working constantly to upgrade their system in a way that is logical, transparent, and has their users’ best interests in mind. Most importantly, they put their money where their mouth is when it comes to censorship. While LiveJournal gladly censored their users to keep their advertisers happy, DreamWidth stood their ground and were willing to switch payment processors twice rather than cave in to pressure to censor content that is legal in the US.

Meanwhile, maintaining a self-hosted blog is kind of a pain. I have to upgrade my WordPress installation regularly to keep it secure, and nearly every upgrade breaks my cross-posting plugins. So far I’ve been able to fix them, but that’s hours of my life wasted each time. I also get many fewer comments on my own blog–people just don’t like leaving the comfort of the journaling sites, even though it’s simple enough to click the link to comment directly at my blog. (It is, really! Try it!)

I’ve thought about closing my self-hosted blog and switching my main blog to DreamWidth, but that feels like a step backwards. With my own hosted site, I have more control. I can have infinite userpics and mood themes. If there’s something in the code I dislike, I can go in directly and change it. If I want a new feature, I can install an existing plugin or write my own. I can create backups directly from the database. I can do a full-text search and put my Twitter and Delicious accounts in my sidebar. It’s just more customizable, and it fits my control freak tendencies.

I do want to support DreamWidth, though, and I want to continue to distance myself from LiveJournal. Since I’m already paying for my own blog and frantically saving to go to Paris in October, I don’t want to pay for a DreamWidth account yet. But I am trying to center my fannish activity there by:

1. Adding as many White Collar people there as possible. That new!fandom!squee! is the perfect motivation to get me to read my DW reading list daily.
2. Filtering everyone who crossposts to both sites so that I’ll only see their posts on DW. If you crosspost and I have you on my LJ flist but not my DW reading list, please let me know your DW username so I can add you.
3. Enabling comments on DreamWidth. I’m not sure if this is right–I really like having comments centered on my own blog so that the discussion happens in one location and so I can make a complete backup from one place. But if it was hard to get my old friends to comment on my own blog, it’s basically impossible to get new friends to do so. Plus, it’s a way to encourage more activity at DreamWidth. So… for now, I’m enabling comments at DreamWidth, though I’d still prefer comments on my own blog.

Now I shall have to make a commitment to actually post more often. Having a new fandom certainly helps!

(I wish there was more time in the day. There is so much I want to say about White Collar and so much guilt about the RL work I should be doing instead. Argh. But this is me, so expect fannish indulgence to win out eventually!)

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. You can comment here or there.