Free At Last, Free At Last...
Thank Gawd, Almighty, I am free at last!! Perhaps you've noticed that my blog has a new look (a new "skin" in the vernacular of the day). I have been complaining, whining and kvetching for over two years about how much I dislike using RADIO USERLAND as a blogging tool. When I started blogging in 2003, RADIO was inexpensive and seemed easy to use. It had an automatic picture uploading tool. It had RSS features I liked.
BUT THEN ... I started traveling more and wanted to blog from film festivals like Sundance and SXSW and Tribeca but it was nearly impossible and totally frustrating. I had to move everything to a laptop (which I always had to check out from school, borrow from a friend or use my antiquated "luggable" laptop) because RADIO requires the application and root folders to function. Then, when I got home, I need to reverse the process. It was so dang irritating not to be able to just log-in through a browser and blog remotely.
I looked into converting to another software package but found it would insanely tedious and time consuming to transfer a Radio Blog. Every site I found online that had hints and help for exporting Radio entries was either very old or not very encouraging. I started leaving messages on bulletin boards in the hope of finding an easy way to fix my problem. One Board Moderator directed me to the Workbench of Rogers Cadenhead.
You see, I'd started blogging on IndieWIRE and had come to love Movable Type. I had the option of post-dating entries (if I wanted to work ahead) and of categorizing easily. MOST important, I could blog remotely ... from any computer in the world. I wanted the features of Movable Type AND, at the same time, I didn't want to surrender three years of content!!!
Imagine my joy when Cadenhead (an author, consultant, teacher and total tech-head (I mean that in the nicest way possible) quickly and efficiently converted my 991 ENTRIES for transfer into IndieWIRE for a very reasonable fee. (My friends were so happy to hear I wouldn't be complaining about that anymore.) He even found a way to preserve the image links (refer to the screen snap for the nasty snarl of the deeply nested and separate folders that Radio creates). I wanted to get it done BEFORE Tribeca (which starts in six days) and he accomplished in record time.
Then, Jonathan at PC Optimized was able to set Movable Type up on MY server and import that data so I can now post to any of my blogs, from anywhere in the world, at any time, without losing my years of research. Now, I can get back to WORK and get some entries up!!!
