Upping Sticks

I mentioned recently I’d been planning some changes around here

I wanted to do this on the two year blog-anniversary as it seemed a cool thing to do but it hasn’t worked out that way so I’m doing it today (it’s just a coincidence it’s Halloween)

I’m moving my blog and hosting it myself

When I first started the blog I had no idea where it would be going to, if I’d stick at it or even if anyone would read it!

WordPress.com was great for this is at meant I could get up and running and it wouldn’t cost me a penny. If I decided it wasn’t for me then I could just walk away and that would be that

However, two years on it’s more than just something I dabble in. Even when I’m on one of my quiet periods I still think a lot about my blog.

Obviously the free WordPress services comes with some limitations. You are limited in the plugin’s and themes you can work with, your own advertising is a no-no (not that I’m planning on having any!). In a nutshell the creative control of how your site works is taken away from you.

The upside however is that I don’t have to worry about the admin side of things. Backups, security patching, server performance, uptime, etc, etc

I’ve had the andyparkes.co.uk domain name for ages now (redirected to the wordpress site) so that wasn’t an issue. I already pay for hosting due to other sites I have so the only decision I had to make was over which software to use

Making a move is something I’ve been agonising over for a while and I heavily tested blogengine.net which I was pretty impressed with. It’s written in ASP .NET, is open source and is very easy to work with. My only issue was when I had a problem importing my old posts across. If it hadn’t been for that I’d have jumped at it I think

But I’ve been so used to using WordPress for so long I couldn’t turn away from it!

Another reason for not doing this sooner was that I was worried about broken links and the fact that since the site has been around so long that certain posts were turning up toward the top of Google searches (do a search for netmeeting and vista on the UK site) which also gave me nice ego boosting stat graphs 🙂

But in the end I thought – screw it.

The new home for this blog can be found at

www.andyparkes.co.uk/blog

Please update any feeds you may have and if you visit the site itself excuse the dust while I try to figure out which themes, plugins, etc I’m happy with

I’ll cross post for a little while until I’m happy all is well and then parkey.wordpress.com will remain as an archive. I need to keep that WordPress account open anyway so I can use askimet and the stats plugin’s so I don’t plan on deleting the site

If you’ve read my blog over the last two years I’d like to say thanks. I’ve had an awful lot of things happen that would have just bypassed me if I hadn’t started rambling here two years ago. If you have any feedback (or you think I’m an arse!) please drop me an email or a comment

Now we just need to get someone else on a proper blogging platform 😉

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Andy Parkes is Technical Director at Coventry based IT support company IBIT Solutions. Formerly, coordinator of AMITPRO and Microsoft Partner Area Lead for 2012-2013. He also isn't a fan of describing himself in the third person.

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