Sad but looking forward...

Around 4 years ago I was browsing the Internet looking for information on cloth nappies and came across the online diary of a lovely lady called Alice who was expecting her first child. I read her diary and through her found many others from mothers of young children just like me. I loved the idea of an online diary, it seemed so different from the more commercial blogs I'd seen so far. I knew I'd found a way to keep a true record of my baby girl as she grew up. I dreamed of making up scrap books and photo albums but realised in reality an online diary was a more practical way of doing it. I set up my own diary and got to work. I was delighted at how easy it felt to write something down and get up some photos a couple of times a week. I loved Diaryland as a site too. For starters I got a simple pleasure out of the fact it was called "Diaryland" as it was an English Diary and not an American "Blog" or "Journal" I was writing. I also liked that I could fully customize my page and learnt a lot about html in my time. Over 5 years my diary has clocked up over 300 entries and has followed the birth of my son and the life of both of them right up until Jaya going to school. My Diaryland diary has felt like my online home where all my memories are stored.

A few months ago Diaryland changed and many people left. I was determined to stay as I'm very loyal and loved the fact that my diary went right back to when Jaya was 6 months old. In the meantime I opened a craft blog up at Blogger, mainly because there were already a lot of craft blogs there. It was whilst working on that blog that I began to really notice the differences. Blogger has an autosave feature that rescued my writing many times as the computer/Internet crashed whilst I was dealing with a child emergency. It also has a spell-checker (essential for me, normally I spell-check my diary entries in Word before I post them and still I miss words!), and you can easily change the font/colour etc. The other main advantage is that to add photos to your diary entry you simply upload them. To add photos in Diaryland I have to upload them to Photoshop, convert their size to 450 pixels wide, save them in an Internet friendly form, then upload them to Photobucket and copy the html into my diary entry. It's a real faff! All of this was offered at Blogger for free whereas at Diaryland I was having to pay for half the amount of help and features.

All this led to me pondering about moving to Blogger with this diary too. The thought of it made me feel so sad though. I had all those years' worth of entries at Diaryland and I still felt loyal. I watched all my friends move away and felt very torn. Then it occurred to me... why not just transfer my whole diary across? In fact my original inspiration, Alice, had the same idea (great minds and all that!) and beat me to it! That was what decided it for me. I am sad to leave Diaryland after remaining loyal for all these years but it just makes far more sense to move. Having made the decision to move I started to transfer diary entries across. I originally planned to do just like Alice and move my whole diary across before officially opening up my Blogger diary. This means cutting and pasting every single diary entry and changing the date and time to be the same as the original. I started a couple of months ago and have been doing them when I can, hoping to have them all across by now. However in the past 5 years I have managed 350 diary entries! Not only that but the first year and half of those are packed full of photos that I also hosted at Diaryland. It hasn't just been a case of cutting and pasting those ones, I have to download every photograph and then re-upload them in the Blogger entry. On top of that we kept having computer problems and I alternated between having to try and do it with an on-screen keyboard, or not having access to a computer at all! I have been struggling through but have only managed to transfer 80 entries so far! Finally I have had enough and decided I can't carry on any more. I am making the move but I'm not fully there yet. I will slowly add in all the backdated entries whenever I get a chance over the next couple of months. Think of it as me having moved but not yet unpacked all the boxes ;)

My new home is here.....

http://tequilamonkeyshots.blogspot.com/

It is still a locked diary so I've sent email invites to those I have them for (and who I know will want one) and anyone else will need to email me (mail@jemmajessup.com) so that I can send you an invite. You'll have to set up a Google account I'm afraid if you don't already have one, but that is quick and easy to do. Let me know what you think of my new blog. It's a work in progress; not only have I not fully unpacked but I also need to decorate! I have put up a temporary funky background for now but will make a more personal one when I get a chance. There may also be the odd photo that I haven't properly transferred so let me know if you get any blank spaces, error messages or get asked for the Diaryland password when you visit. I'll also still need to go through and sort out any dodgy links. My old diary will still be at Diaryland, it just won't be updated. One of the things that makes me still feel very sad is that I cannot take along all your lovely comments to Blogger with me. They'll still be with each entry at Diaryland for me to look back over at least and I look forward to future comments.

That's it, my last entry at Diaryland and my first official one at Blogger! I'll be leaving this entry up for a couple of days to make sure most people have made the move and then I'll get back to proper diary entries with photos. Looking forward to easy blogging from now on! Keeping everything crossed I won't have to move again, and can continue my diary for years (decades!) to come!

2 comments so far