So, why did I change back to Blogger, a piece of software that I had written off about a year ago? Here is the story.

About 3-4 months ago, I, and many Movable Type users, started noticing spam coming into my comments. I felt invaded, perturbed, and a bit confused. I didn't have the knowledge base to install the plug-ins that quickly became available because I knew nothing about working with Movable Type, other then the basics. (I could add a blog, play with the templates, add categories, etc, but had no idea about how to install plug-ins). In fact, I didn't even download the software; Blake did it for me (not that I couldn't figure it out myself, I just asked him to do it). So, my knowledge of Movable Type was limited. Also, in order to install some of the plug-ins (especially the anti-spam plug-in), I had to upgrade MT. "Not going to happen", I said to myself one night after reading the instructions. So, the next best method to getting rid of the spam was to start banning IP addresses and delete it manually. While this worked for about 2 months, I quickly became overwhelmed as the spam continued unabated. I had to do something.

I then turned to Radio, thinking that I would start using their blogging software to carry LS. Heck, I pay $40 per year to license it (mainly for the aggregator), I might as well use the weblog portion. So, I started to set it up, and quickly came across two potential issues:

1) I would have to change my RSS Feed from .rdf to .xml. I didn't want to do that and risk losing readers (even if I sent out a post recommending that readers change to .xml, I would have lost many, I just know it), and I highly doubted that Radio would support any sort of .rdf feed (in fact, if it did, I would have thrown up my hands and said aloud, "What is all this fighting about?!").

2) Radio does not support SFTP. Why? I have no idea. I needed it to support SFTP because LIShost only uses SFTP. Blake is very security conscious (and rightly so) and there was no way that I was going to change hosts.

After talking Blake into setting me up with FTP (he wasn't a happy camper, let me tell you), I tried and tried and tried and tried (and tried) to configure Radio to post to the LS domain, but just couldn't do it. Blake also tried, to no avail. I then turned to Jenny who said to post my issue to the Radio discussion board and contact a guy at Radio who had helped her in the past (which I did, with limited success - the guy only e-mailed me back once). Also, I didn't want to post to the discussion board, for the sole reason that I can't stand those things. Sure, I probably would have gotten help on this issue, and probably could have had it set up properly, but the aforementioned .rdf to .xml transition was still bugging me. So, no go on Radio.

As a last effort, I turned back to Blogger for the following reasons:

1) I knew how to use it.

2) I can have my original .rdf RSS feed.

3) It supports SFTP.

4) I can use YACCS, which means I can get my comments via RSS (yeah, I know that I could have set this up in Radio as well), and not have to deal with comment spam.

That's where I am now, using Blogger and having a good time with it. I was able to set up a similar interface to the one I had before with MT (actually, I thinks it's nicer on the eyes), and I get to use that neat little orange button on the Google Toolbar to post to my weblog. At this point, I am using three blogging tools (which is important for someone in my position because most of my presentations are about weblogs):

1) Blogger for Library Stuff

2) Movable Type for LIS Blogsource (which will have a new domain soon, BTW)

3) Radio to post these types of long posts.