Just wanted to, how do you say, engage in a frank and honest discussion with you.
OK, Simpsons references aside, tomorrow we shall come to a crossroads in the life of Scott's Blog Of Doom, so I thought I should open things up to see how people are feeling a bit.
Basically the decision was made to take rspwfaq.com, the Wordpress site hosted on Scotsman's server, offline leading up to Wrestlemania because the live RAW threads were nearly bringing down the whole server single-handedly and WM would probably leave them a smoking heap. My original thought was of course to migrate back to Livejournal for a week, but I couldn't find a layout that looked anything near decent and the comment system sucks ass, so I tried Blogger instead. Of course, I immediately fell in love with it and bought a new domain for this version of the blog via Google, rspwfaq.net, so that I could do all sorts of extra cool stuff with the site. Tomorrow we're scheduled to have rspwfaq.com migrate back to the original Wordpress blog again, and at this point I'm leaning heavily towards not bothering. Here's my list of talking points so you can weigh in if you have an opinion:
1. Cost. Moving back to Wordpress is, at best, a temporary solution to say the least. This weekend the blog did all-time record numbers of pageviews that Blogger handled without breaking a sweat, and the Wordpress blog simply can't sustain that level of growth any longer. To continue with a self-hosted blog as is, I'm going to need my own server, and all investigation I've done leads me to conclude that it'll have to be a fairly good dedicated server. We're talking upwards of $150 a month for something like that, and I just don't have the resources to justify that kind of expense. Not to mention that I originally got away from running the technical end of a website (Rantsylvania/TheSmarks.com) because I fucking hate dealing with it and have no desire to go back to it again. Blogger is free and obviously has no issue handling whatever traffic I can throw at it, and any issues are handled behind the scenes by my Googly overlords.
2. Ease of use. Blogger can literally do everything I was doing with Wordpress with a lot less configuring needed on my end of things. I can't even tell you how much easier it was to install and configure Disqus on here (copy and paste a line of code, bam, DONE) than it was on Wordpress (install plugin, set a million options, run conversion process, wait several days). For me, it's like the difference between PC gaming and Xbox gaming. I don't want to go through the minutia of updating drivers and tweaking the video card anymore, I just want to pop in the disc and play. That's what changing over to Blogger has been like for me -- no worries about which version of Wordpress is running what plugins, it all just WORKS. I love Wordpress, but it was getting to the point where I literally had to purge all of the plugins at the end because I had no idea what was conflicting with what anymore.
3. Speed. I don't know what you guys have experienced thus far, but Blogger is lightning fast from my end, both in updating and surfing. Wordpress was starting to get really bottlenecked by the extra traffic, along with the server, and it was driving me pretty nuts from an ease-of-use standpoint. Disqus seems a little slower here than on WP, but on WP it was eating up giant amounts of resources and apparently had lag issues for some people as well. So being a little slower here seems like a small price to pay, I'd say.
So yeah, that's where we stand. Barring any giant objections or dealbreakers that I haven't thought of, my play is going to be having rspwfaq.com pointing to this site once I've gone through the miserable process of backing up and converting all the posts and comments from WP format into Blogger format. Once that's done, I see no reason not to shut down the Wordpress site and move permanently here.
Thoughts? Does it really matter to you all that much so long as your bookmarks don't change?
OK, Simpsons references aside, tomorrow we shall come to a crossroads in the life of Scott's Blog Of Doom, so I thought I should open things up to see how people are feeling a bit.
Basically the decision was made to take rspwfaq.com, the Wordpress site hosted on Scotsman's server, offline leading up to Wrestlemania because the live RAW threads were nearly bringing down the whole server single-handedly and WM would probably leave them a smoking heap. My original thought was of course to migrate back to Livejournal for a week, but I couldn't find a layout that looked anything near decent and the comment system sucks ass, so I tried Blogger instead. Of course, I immediately fell in love with it and bought a new domain for this version of the blog via Google, rspwfaq.net, so that I could do all sorts of extra cool stuff with the site. Tomorrow we're scheduled to have rspwfaq.com migrate back to the original Wordpress blog again, and at this point I'm leaning heavily towards not bothering. Here's my list of talking points so you can weigh in if you have an opinion:
1. Cost. Moving back to Wordpress is, at best, a temporary solution to say the least. This weekend the blog did all-time record numbers of pageviews that Blogger handled without breaking a sweat, and the Wordpress blog simply can't sustain that level of growth any longer. To continue with a self-hosted blog as is, I'm going to need my own server, and all investigation I've done leads me to conclude that it'll have to be a fairly good dedicated server. We're talking upwards of $150 a month for something like that, and I just don't have the resources to justify that kind of expense. Not to mention that I originally got away from running the technical end of a website (Rantsylvania/TheSmarks.com) because I fucking hate dealing with it and have no desire to go back to it again. Blogger is free and obviously has no issue handling whatever traffic I can throw at it, and any issues are handled behind the scenes by my Googly overlords.
2. Ease of use. Blogger can literally do everything I was doing with Wordpress with a lot less configuring needed on my end of things. I can't even tell you how much easier it was to install and configure Disqus on here (copy and paste a line of code, bam, DONE) than it was on Wordpress (install plugin, set a million options, run conversion process, wait several days). For me, it's like the difference between PC gaming and Xbox gaming. I don't want to go through the minutia of updating drivers and tweaking the video card anymore, I just want to pop in the disc and play. That's what changing over to Blogger has been like for me -- no worries about which version of Wordpress is running what plugins, it all just WORKS. I love Wordpress, but it was getting to the point where I literally had to purge all of the plugins at the end because I had no idea what was conflicting with what anymore.
3. Speed. I don't know what you guys have experienced thus far, but Blogger is lightning fast from my end, both in updating and surfing. Wordpress was starting to get really bottlenecked by the extra traffic, along with the server, and it was driving me pretty nuts from an ease-of-use standpoint. Disqus seems a little slower here than on WP, but on WP it was eating up giant amounts of resources and apparently had lag issues for some people as well. So being a little slower here seems like a small price to pay, I'd say.
So yeah, that's where we stand. Barring any giant objections or dealbreakers that I haven't thought of, my play is going to be having rspwfaq.com pointing to this site once I've gone through the miserable process of backing up and converting all the posts and comments from WP format into Blogger format. Once that's done, I see no reason not to shut down the Wordpress site and move permanently here.
Thoughts? Does it really matter to you all that much so long as your bookmarks don't change?
I'm with you wherever you go but honestly man, the less you have to think about the configuration/hosting/speed the more it gives you time to focus on what you actually like, which is writing. Stay on Blogger if you love it that much.
ReplyDeleteAs a user, I've gotten use to this layout, so it doesn't bother me if you go back to Wordpress.
ReplyDeleteWhatever is easier and less of a headache for you, it doesn't matter, just as long as I have somewhere to rant about the goings on of wrestling ^ _____^
My only opinion is get rid of most of these jabronis posting entries here that aren't you. If you want to help a brother out by linking to their blog or posting someone elses column every once in a while, that's cool, but there's way too many crap reviews and opinion posts and generic blather from the circus of fools you allow to make entries. I want to read your stuff Scott, not a bunch of other crap that is mostly of poor to middling quality at best. Lets get back to the basics.
ReplyDeleteBlogger actually loads *much* slower for me than Wordpress ever did. But if I were in your shoes, I'd stick with Blogger due to ease-of-use and cost.
ReplyDeleteI actually kinda disagree with this as I enjoy a lot (certainly not all) of the other posters. Perhaps they should be expelled if there's an overwhelming negative response to their stuff, which has kind of already happened organically to a couple people. But, it would be nice to be able to filter the posts by author, because sometimes I do want to find a specific author's content. There must be some way to easily do that with this site.
ReplyDeleteMy only comment: could you "turn on" a feature that shows the number of comments at the bottom of each preview post on the main page so we can see how many comments there are for a particular article, and also be able to click on that so it's easier to jump straight to the comments section?
ReplyDeleteDo you whatever is best for you. We're not paying for this, so don't worry about us. Any adjustments we'd have to make are minimal and easy to do, anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe new system isn't bad, but I've noticed it squishing some posts after numerous Replies into unreadable columns. Can that be taken out?
ReplyDeleteI'd be most-bummed out of losing your backlog of posts.
I have the entire previous site backed up on my computer several times. Nothing is being lost.
ReplyDeleteThe comments section needs fixed. It appears that comments that have received "likes" are towards the top and everything else goes underneath it. That's just annoying.
ReplyDeleteThat's already there on my end. Do you not see it beside "Posted by (Author) at (time)" at the bottom of the post? I know Wordpress had a little balloon at top, but I think that's specific to Wordpress.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't mind other authors, either.
ReplyDeleteThere's a dropdown box at the top where you can pick how you want the comments sorted. You likely have "Popular now" selected. Just change it to "newest first" or "oldest first".
ReplyDeleteOh, son of a bitch. Thanks, Scott.
ReplyDeleteAfter playing with my settings it looks like AdBlock Plus was eliminating it for some reason. So, never mind.
ReplyDeleteGenerally, the balloon was nice, but the link at the bottom is more than good enough.
I have actually found that blogger is a lot slower than the wordpress site.
ReplyDeleteIs it THAT difficult to...scroll?
ReplyDeleteDon't let Ryan Murphy post anything other than his ROH reviews and we're golden.
ReplyDeleteHaving participated in both the live WM and live Raw threads I vote leave everything how it is right now
ReplyDeleteI say defenitly stick with Blogger, I'm liking this new site and it obviously makes your life easier. Although just wondering something, would you consider somehow adding a Scott's Chat Room of Doom or would that be overkill?
ReplyDeleteEhh...just scroll past them. I like having the other posters as sometimes news pops up that Scott is too busy to post about.
ReplyDeleteIf I can't comment on some news story RIGHT THIS SECOND then what the hell is the point of internet?
When I check from my iPhone (instead of from my PC) it always defaults to "Popular Now" when I want it to default to "Newest First." Anyone know a fix to this?
ReplyDeleteOnly other thing that bothers me is it is quite easy to accidentally swipe left or right moving you to a different topic on the blog. I just have to me more careful, I guess.
My only issue is that I can't post from my IPad as I don't have a disqus account. Other than that, it's fine.
ReplyDeleteThe new site is a lot slower on my work computer, but then again, I should probably be doing work at work anyway. This sounds like the better and cheaper option for you, and it's your blog, so go for it.
ReplyDeleteHi Scott, do you have the archive of this site ?
ReplyDeletehttp://scottkeith.blogspot.com/
For your sake, it makes sense to stay here. I'm just wondering how you are going to organize/make accessible your old posts. Would it be similar to the old site?
ReplyDeleteHere's another vote for sticking on Blogger. I post on Blogger myself and I've always been fond of it.
ReplyDeleteIf it is affordable for you, then keep it.
ReplyDeleteBut please, Scott, do me one favor...NO MORE KYLE FITTA. Ugh! Talk about having X-Pac heat.
Hey Scott--I always loved your sites, so whatever you decide based on financial concerns, just do it. I will say that this site is a bit slower and more cumbersome to navigate (from my droid and computer due to the default setting of "popular entries" appearing first). I also miss your rotating images at the top from the last site! Oh well. Good luck.
ReplyDeletei agree with there is way too much content from fanboys that is poorly written. to me, the biggest prolem is that it isn't clear who posted it. you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the post summary to see, in smaller type, who posted it. so yes, i can skip them, but its annoying to have to stop, don't read it yet, scroll down, see its posted by someone who isn't a hack, scroll back up, start reading.
ReplyDeleteso since its clear you like having these ham and eggers post since it "drives traffic" at least find a way to indicate in the title or towards the top who the post is from.
same problem, but I had that on the old site as well. Just always have to wait till the next day at work to post, or I could get on my laptop which takes 30 mins to start up, or the desktop but that's in my sons room.
ReplyDeleteKyle wished himself the best in his future endeavors at the end of his second day.
ReplyDeleteAre all the posts from the old site (like all the various PPV rants) being transferred over here? If so, than I'm fine with it. This site seems a little slower, but 10 seconds isn't that important to me.
ReplyDeleteWe must live mirror lives somewhere. Now get off my lawn!
ReplyDeleteI'm liking it over here! Any chance that a lot of the old comments that got lost in the last move will be restored? I notice a lot of old threads will say something like '60 comments' but then be totally blank -- it's mostly stuff pre-2011, so I'm not sure who is exactly going to be reading posts that old, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
ReplyDeleteI used to re-read a lot of Scott's old rants and half the fun is re-reading the comments. When the older stuff got lost, it takes a lot of the fun out of it for me.
DeleteMost of the time I read the Blog of Doom at work where I'm stuck with IE, and Wordpress and IE don't seem to get along very well, so I'm happy with the switch to Blogger
ReplyDeleteYeah, I agree. It loads really slow for me as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm a HUGE fan of the Blooger set-up. It seems faster and cleaner than the Wordpress option. I vote for keeping the party going here.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoy all of Ryan Murphy's posts, but I may be the only one.
Throw my name in the hat of people who are not too thrilled with Blogger. It's slow, clunky, and all around burdensome even with a super fast connection. More often than not, it seems to takes longer to load than graphic-heavy sites, gets hung up while doing so, and is choppy and halting when attempting to scroll. You seem like the kind of guy who keeps his machine relatively cutting edge, so to speak, so you have to consider whether the increased performance you're experiencing is a result of the machine and not the software. Not everyone is going to have great machines or great connections, so for anyone who is NOT having performance issues, let us know whether you're also techies.
ReplyDeleteI also like the fact that Wordpress has an archive by month/date, rather than just date. There are tons of times I've wanted to go back to something with only an idea of a time span in terms of days, and that format has made it much easier to navigate. The only archive I see here is a drop down menu at the bottom with a limited number of days prior.
As far as "fanboy" stuff, that was present on Wordpress, too, so I don't know why that would be an issue here. I'm guessing Scott can just set controls, no?
SWEET!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm used to reading sites on either right now, so whatever your decision is is cool with me.
ReplyDeleteCo-sign. A lot of is redundant. If Scott's doing a RAW recap, why do I need another one by an unknown entity I didn't come here to read?
ReplyDeleteWe're a tough crowd, the blog, at times. However, there's been certain writer's that have stuck with our initial criticisms and are now pretty excellent and I certainly wouldn't want them to go away because you can't....scroll. For one, I don't watch TNA anymore but still enjoy Michael's impact reviews immensely. Logan also does a great job with older Raws. Let Scott and/or the blog decide if your writing is good enough.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure I'm not the first but I just want to make my feelings known
ReplyDeletethat this version of the blog is much better than the previous one.
Scott, if you're happy here, stay here. Simple as that. Happy Scott = content = happy readers.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible, that the sorting of the comments is a little bit off? I see before 13 hour comments over before 6 hour comments and stuff...
ReplyDeleteIf I'm nitpicking, I'll say that this site loads more slowly and that the scrolling isn't very smooth, but that's pretty minor - I just talking to the people on here, if it takes a few extra seconds to do so, it's not a big deal. If you're happier with it, Scott, stick with it.
ReplyDeleteAs for other people posting articles/threads, I don't think there should be a concrete rule one way or the other, but it wouldn't hurt to do a little QA/QC - if somebody is posting a lot and is getting negative feedback (or none at all), don't let them continue. You never know where another great voice may come from, but I do think that you should focus on quality over quantity; I'd rather have one or two good "Raw" reviews than five bad ones.
The only minor thing that kinda bugs me here is that the "Newer Post/Older Posts" are near the botttom here, while they were more conveniently on top in WP.
ReplyDeleteI didn't mind him, he just posted his news items too many times a day. Maybe if he took all that he found and put them into one article/blog entry/etc. I wouldn't have had a problem.
ReplyDeleteI love the new site and it looks sweet on my iPhone so I say stick with this if that's best for you. And thanks for all the great stuff you provide on a daily basis.
ReplyDeleteI freely admit to liking the "best rated comments first" system, because I made a throwaway comment about disliking Randy Orton that I guess numerous people agreed with and wound up with the highest rated comment on the WM Recap. And if my e-ego is satisfied, what else matters?
ReplyDeleteThe only difference I see is that this site is very slightly more aesthetically pleasing to me, for whatever that comment is worth.. Basically, this works for me. I don't get the slowness thing at all from my end either.
ReplyDeleteIf you got record page views over the weekend, then go with how things are right now, not changing a thing. Makes sense. Don't go suddenly changin' now for the sake of change. And yeah, I realise I say this when you've just made a huge change of host: don't go changing how it is NOW. And if you meet anyone over the weekend called Katie Vick, DO NOT OFFER TO DRIVE HER HOME.
ReplyDeleteI somewhat agree. I think the roster of contributors needs to be thinned out somewhat. It IS nice to have different voices, but some folks--especially those a bit too in love with themselves--don't need any more encouragement.
ReplyDeleteThe only way I've found around that is to stay logged into Disqus through one of the sign-in options, then re-toggle the dropdown box. This may not apply to the iPhone, however.
ReplyDeleteSee, I actually enjoy Ryan's posts. But I seem to share common ground re: his comments in the first place, so there's that.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was starting to feel like 411 or Pulse. And that sort of thing is not why I come back here every day.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I haven't enjoyed lately is from a content perspective as opposed to design/hosting is the onset of super long reviews and posts. What draws me in here is the blitz of opinion or review, and the dialogue that comes from it. Honestly, fatigue starts to set in really quickly when my eyes start to cross from page after page of "stuff".
ReplyDeleteTHANK GOD I CAN COME BACK NOW!
ReplyDeleteI was seriously silently protesting until that kid left.