We're Moving! (Later)

Or rather I'm moving. My sister has been inactive for months. But it wont be for another 3 months due to school. I have been searching to host my own blog mainly so that I can do the following:

1. Combine my old blog with this one.
   As a publishing platform, Wordpress and Blogger have differences. I wanted Wordpress because they have backtracks instead of backlinks. A matter of preference. They also have better site statistics and better interface or organization of tags (known as labels in Blogger) and categories (no such thing. Use the damn labels). After using Wordpress, Blogger has been painful. I'm not the only one that feels this way.
2. Be able to freely design
   My old blog was at Blogsome and although it uses Wordpress as a publishing platform and allows flexibility in design, it is actually somewhat limited because it uses the Smarty templating system which is just as restrictive in site design like Blogger. Others such as Wordpress.com required a $30 monthly fee for the restriction to be lifted.

I found the hosting your own site can be pretty traumatizing from what I read. Sometimes the host just fails too frequently in terms of your site's speed and uptime. Sometimes the support is just horrible when performance or security problems occur, even if its "only" once in a white moon. Other times they undercut the promised refund amount should they fail to deliver. Or it takes you 3 to 6 months of continual chasing to get the money. Maybe they're hoping you'll give up and go away. They're a lot more but these few are enough to make me give up. I trawled though review sites for 3 whole days and still I can't find a reliable host.

Then I found tumblr. It looked promising. It gives me nice stats, tags and categories and allows me to use my own domain if I so choose. Zemata supports it as well. I looked at the documentation regarding site design and from what I see, it looks pretty liberating. I already parked a site address that's empty right now. In 6 months time, after I'm free of school work and assignments, I'll move everything over and give it a new look. Or I might just move before the 6 months is up but use their templates first.

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