New Year, New Site

I rang in the New Year putting the finishing touches on moving robjquinn.com to its new home. While Blogger might not be the final stop, I’m happy with what I’m seeing so far. I’m even more pleased at the prospect of not having to set aside an hour or two just to deal with the mechanics of Squarespace’s editor when publishing a blog post.

New Year, new site . . . new profile picture?

It was a bit tedious moving everything from one service to the other, but I enjoyed some of the walk down memory lane. The #INHTIY book tour supporting the release of I’m Not Here to Inspire You generated some fun pics. Videos for “What’s your favorite exercise?” and “My Workout” promoting Reach Past Your Limits were pretty cool to see again, too.

Of course, promoting my books is still a huge purpose of having the site! And, yes, I’m hopeful to have at least a rough draft of a reboot of the Super Crip storyline featuring the Red O’Ryan character this year.

I like the fact that my sports blog is now integrated into my site. I’ve really enjoyed having a few regular commenters on my sports posts since I restarted Rob Q. Ink – A Philly Sports Blog in the fall. It’s something I hope to see on the Rob J. Quinn blog. (My “writerly blog?) So, as I say on the sports blog, get in the comments! A good back-and-forth can make the blogs much more interesting.

I do have a few concerns moving back to Blogger, but I had to keep reminding myself that the benefits of moving the site outweighed the lost time in making the switch.

Five years ago – I still can’t believe I tolerated Squarespace for five years! – I bought robjquinn.com (for at least the second time) and subscribed to the Squarespace hosting service to create my new website.

About a year-and-a-half ago, I began having more and more trouble with the editor on Squarespace. When I finally asked their “customer support” about it – I literally wondered if I was struggling due to my declining physical abilities or a problem with the editor – I received a response essentially saying, “Oh, yeah, our old editor is atrocious, we have a new editor.”

Well, hello?? I'm a paying customer and you’re telling me your product stinks?

I had been aware that they had a newer platform, and actually wondered if they were making they’re old editor harder to use to “encourage” customers to upgrade. (Still do.) Worse, upgrading to their new platform was no different than going to a new service, which still baffles me. There was no “push button” way to move my site to the new service.

That was part of the reason I started tinkering around with my old sports blog. I figured I’d get my feet wet using Blogger again. When I moved to Squarespace, I’d read that Google was letting Blogger rot on the vine to die. Well, apparently not. Once I took the plunge with a new template for the sports blog, I knew I was going to move at least the blog from my .com back to Blogger. And the more I tinkered with pages and the navigation menu, I decided to move the whole site.

Things shift a bit when going from the main page to a blog post (though it might not get noticed on a mobile) and the navigation menu doesn’t always seem to be available when you’re reading a post. It makes me wonder if they understand the concept of a template. (If you don’t see the sidebar, just go to the main page of either blog.) I may try adding a “Home” link at the bottom of each blog.

But, overall, I actually think the site looks and functions better. It’s pretty rare to be able to say that moving from a paid service to a free one. (Though I imagine Google gets something out of people using Blogger.) I’m also kind of assuming that most people are more internet savvy than I am, and, for instance, know where to find the menu. It took me a minute!

The site now has some great sharing tools. (E’hm. You can help grow my readership.) Squarespace was ridiculously self-contained, which is exactly what you don’t want from a hosting service as a writer trying to attract readers. My web hosting subscription didn’t even include a Facebook share button! Blogger’s free (not to be cheap) and if their stats are believable (???) I’m already getting significantly more hits than I ever got at Squarespace. I am questioning that, but using a service owned by Google might be paying off.

I’m also happy to keep www.robjquinn.com attached to the site. For now, it merely goes to my blog at https://robjquinn.blogspot.com, but I’ll take it. Besides, in five years with Squarespace, statistics showed that the blog overwhelmingly brought in most of the traffic to my site.

By the way, if you’re looking for a post that was originally published through Squarespace, I created a list of posts that moved. You can check it out right here. I also have all of the comments from those posts, which I’ll be re-posting soon.

So, take a look around and let me know what you think of the new site. Any glitches or problems? Please call it to my attention. It really helps! And don’t forget to subscribe for a personal message from me whenever I have a new post if you’re not already on the list of recipients.