Remember a few months ago I called Posterous the “lazy man’s blog platform”? I totally take it back now.
Ok, actually, that’s not true–it’s not that I take it back–it IS the lazy man’s blog platform–but, only in the best sense of the word “lazy.” I’m obsessed with it now.
I’d set up a blog there a while ago and was sort of “meh” about it–didn’t really give it much thought. But recently my personal blog–also on Blogger, but the older version (I started it about 4 years ago) than the version that this blog is run on. So a few weeks ago I went to add a new post and wasn’t able to. I waited, asked Blogger for help, waited, tried again, waited, asked for help…and still nothing. All I’d get when I went to add a new post was the little spinning dial/loading icon…and that’s it.
So I figured it was either a sign that it was time to shut that blog down or move to another platform. I like WordPress and always hear about how great it is, so figured I’d just move to that. So I tried. Imported all the posts to WordPress.com and attempted to get it into a decent-looking template with a few tweaks.
Forget tweaks on WordPress.com if you’re using a free template–you can’t touch the html in the template like you can in Blogger (or, Posterous). All I wanted was to be able to add a retweet button and a Facebook like button…but after much time researching, realized that to do this I’d have to go with a hosted version. So I did that. Bought a domain, installed WordPress and figured ok, NOW I’m done. But it looked like crap and when I went to install the measly 2 plugins I wanted, I got a message that I wasn’t authorized to add plugins.
F that. I’d already poured several hours into the process and the template looked like crap and I was tired of fooling with it. It’s not like it’s a business blog or anything–certainly not worth spending money on since basically nobody reads it and I’m not really interested in growing that readership.
So I thought I’d check out Posterous and see if you could import posts. You can, and you can even import them and merge them into an existing Posterous blog. So I did that, spent maybe a half hour doing some customization, and voila–Maggie Unlimited was born.
It looks a million times better than this blog and I’d forgotten how easy it was to post to Posterous. I’m horrible about adding photos to blog posts here but with Posterous it’s so easy you can’t help but do it. It’s also perfect for personal blogging because it’s so easy I’ve posted more in the past few days than I did over the past several months on the old version of that blog. Add in my iPhone 4 and I can now do video and audio posts so easily that I have a feeling I’ll be doing a lot more of that over there–how can I not when all I have to do is record then send the file via email and it’s posted?
The one downside is that there is no draft mode–you publish and that’s it. But for a personal blog that’s fine. Also no sidebar for posting ads–but lucky for me I don’t do ads so it doesn’t matter.
Lazy man’s blogging FTW!
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