Saturday, April 2, 2011

Embrace The Change

For those of us of a certain age, change isn't easy. We weren't introduced to computers, or much at all by the way of technology, in the classroom. What we can do with a computer sometimes has passed us by in ways that those who are much younger can't understand. We just try different things to see what works, but we really don't have any idea why it does work or why it doesn't. And there are times when we are faced with the latter rather than the former.

Right now, some of us have had to move from our original blogsite to somewhere else. Our original site was very user friendly. One had to be a member in order to comment on our blogs, and we had to see the site owners advertising. We could only add to our pages things like a list of other websites we enjoyed and the list of the blogs we liked that were members of the site, but it was user friendly.

In order to customize a background we had to hunt the web, download the pic or background we wanted to use, and then upload it somewhere that would give it a code. Once that was done we had to open a feature called palette and then make changes in the html codes in order to change whatever we wanted to change. If you weren't sure what you were toying with, because you don't write code or understand it, well...lets just say things could get interesting.

There was a sense of community there. Like any community there were troublemakers. The site had a home page on which there were listed the "Most Popular Blogs" and at one time there was another place on that page where blogs the owner thought were worthy were listed. It was done by rotation, two or three at a time so you'd see something different each time you logged onto the home page. Problems arose when some of the bloggers didn't see their blogs prominently listed. Didn't mean they weren't there, just that they hadn't gotten lucky. The hue and cry raised by those bloggers with their noses out of joint spelled the end of that particular feature. Unfortunately, "Most Popular" remained. It was a thorn in the side of far too many people and the cause of a number of schoolyard fights. Fights which caused many bloggers we enjoyed to leave. I even left once and started the blog you're reading now. I didn't do much with it because it didn't have that sense of community nor the ease of use my old blog had.

The site never made the owner any money, so things couldn't be upgraded when necessary. It became one of the slowest sites online. Some of us donated money for a new server. Once the new server was purchased, other things started to go bad, and page loads became slower and slower. The site went down a couple of times for a number of hours each time. Finally we received notice that the site was closing as of April 31 this year. It was a sad day for many of us since we hadn't acquired knowledge of any other site. Our former site was so easy to use that we never had a need to do so. Well, now we do.

That's our bottom line right there. We have to make a change. We can do it in one of two ways. Either we stop blogging entirely or we learn to use another blog site without the easy software we're used to. We can look at it as a new adventure, try various places to see what works best for us, or we can sit here and whine about what we believe we've lost.

Nothing is ever perfect in this world nor online. Everything has it's pluses and it's minuses. The best thing we can do for ourselves is look at where we've been in the past with honesty. That too had it's ups and downs. The problem is that we're remembering the positives and failing to remind ourselves of the negatives. They existed. Our old site wasn't any more perfect than anything else is. All that "used to was" attitude does is bog us down. It adds to our frustration when we are faced with something new. Makes it harder for us to make heads or tails of what we're reading, and read we must since this place and others like it are different. Very different, but once we get the hang of it, we'll be all right.

16 comments:

  1. Hello Sherry -

    Great post and a very accurate depiction. The winds of change are always blowing and sometimes it just blows harder than others. It is nice to see alot of familiar faces / names though and know that we are all going through the same thing seperately, yet together.

    Your new look is great and I will follow you. Good luck! Joram

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  2. Joram,

    We're all experiencing those pangs, but some of us are making things harder than they need to be, and Blogstream had it's problems. I've kicked myself in the butt with this post and have looked around some. I like it here, even though things happen that I don't understand.

    And the new look is simple to do, all I have to do is point and click. No html which I don't understand. LOL

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  3. Sherry:

    I'm making do with the change ok.. so far anyways.. I'm learning new things about blogger more every day.. its not so bad here. I do miss those blasted Emoticons though.

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  4. Sherry: I'm with Scratch - miss the emoticons, but I don't miss making changes via html!

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  5. Sherry:

    April 31 of this year?

    Thirty days hath September,
    April, June and November;
    February has twenty eight alone
    All the rest have thirty-one
    Except in Leap Year, that's the time
    When February's Days are twenty-nine :)

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  6. Sherry:

    The word "popular" is generally understood to mean that which appeals to or is appreciated by a wide range of people, in this case - bloggers.

    Being the "Most Popular" site simply means that more bloggers, for whatever reason, visit and comment on that blog than on others. It
    doesn't mean that particular blog is the "best" site in terms of writing, choice of topics, etc. It is simply a numbers game. I don't understand why other bloggers would be offended by numbers.

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  7. Whit,

    It was a human phenomenon I saw at craft shows. Some people have expectations that are too high when it comes to their work. A really great piece wouldn't sell because it might be the wrong color, or maybe the price was too high. The piece would reflect the crafters dedication in it's quality, but it just didn't move.

    After a few hours, you'd see the crafter wasn't smiling anymore and then sometimes they'd go as far as attacking the work of the person who was selling better. It wasn't that they were normally the type of person who didn't celebrate their friends success, it was that they were feeling slapped in the face somehow. When they started feeling like that, they lost the joy in their own work. Once that happened they'd seek validation from those crafters who were having the same feelings.

    I used to feel sorry for those people, both at craft shows and online. Face to face it's easy to help someone feel better. Not so much online, especially when the trouble might be caused not from any real hurt feelings, but simply because they can. It took me a long time to understand that.

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  8. HD,

    I used to shake in my seat when I changed my background and more than once nearly screwed up my blog. I agree about the emoticons though. Sometimes I do miss them.

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  9. Scratch,

    I miss the emoticons myself, but the software here doesn't allow comment graphics.

    One good thing though, at least if we get a comment on our posts, it's safe to assume the post was read. I always used to wonder if those sparkly comment graphics meant that folks didn't read the post. LOL

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  10. Whit,

    OMG it DOES say April 31. ROFL and needing one of those red faced emoticons right about now.

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  11. Agree with Joram, like your new new background, fits the blog well, and the text is still easy enough to read.

    Overall I'm actually happy with the change from blogstream. I just changed themes on my blog, something I didn't even think about at blogstream. I also am on tumblr now, which I had never heard about prior to last month. My one regret is the loss of emoticons. I loved those guys.

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  12. Skinny,

    Once in awhile something I do doesn't work the way it's supposed to. Makes me sit here and whine. However, given all the less than positive things I listed in my post, well, I'm actually liking things here.

    Next time I find myself whining, I'm going to come here and read my post again. Then I'll stop long enough to read and understand what I'm reading. Works better when I understand it. LOL

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  13. I tried a different browser...It worked here. But the browser is so slow.

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  14. Bookworm,

    Try cleaning the cookies out of your browser. Just wait until you're ready to go offline or you'll have to log back into everything again. LOL

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  15. Sherry,
    Downloaded Chrome just to be able to use Blogger. At least, my comments won't vanish into cyberspace anymore...I know this post was about embracing change...but Blogger sure is pain in some ways.

    I like the ease of background changes, the widgets, etc...but whole comment thing is outdated and not at all easy for a newbie to navigate...so in that respect I miss the Stream!!! LOL

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  16. Bookworm,

    Tell me about it! This post was aimed at me, not anyone else. I get frustrated, and did this post to remind me that BS had it's ups and downs too. Just because I miss something doesn't mean this place is all bad.

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