Looking For Some New Cheese

Life if full of challenges. Our journey is to chip away at these challenges and then face new challenges. Always be ready for the cheese to move. (For the relevance of this comment, see Has Your Cheese Moved?)

While a relatively small change, it appears that I will soon be "required" to transfer My Wealth Builder to the New Blogger. I have been putting this off since I received the message in mid December. Having just learned how to use Blogger since August, I was not looking forward to a conversion and learning new software again.

While this is not a drastic as major changes (e.g. required job change), I thought it could be a good example of one way to deal with change (moving cheese:-). First, I am not looking forward to this change since several bloggers have had difficult transitions, resulting in their blog being inaccessible for a period of time. In addition, the support from Google appears to be insufficient for some with issues. However, rather than avoid the change, I took steps to "go back into the maze" and learn how to manage the change.

Here's how I am approaching this change:

Learn from the experience of others. I read through blogger help forums to understand the issues. It seems some of the issues may be caused by user error. One blog, Beta Blogger for Dummies , had particularly useful advice on backing up content, templates and making the transition.

Backup important information and content. Based on what I read, my plan was to:

1. Backup post content. I did this by copying the source coding from each web page to a notepad file. I backed up each archive month.
   
2. Backup templates. I copied the most recent Blogger templates to a notepad file.
   

Run a preliminary test. I created a New Blogger account and created a new blog in which I could experiment. I was able to confirm that my old Blogger templates would transfer if I maintained the "classic" template. In addition, I began to experiment with New Blogger. Using information from Beta Blogger for Dummies, I was able to create a three column format on New Blogger that almost replicated my current design.

I still need to some of my HTML code in Blogger to be completely compatible with XHTML of New Blogger. I have already confirmed that some of my text link ads are not compatible with XHTML. However, the text link ads did transfer under the "classic" template.

Wait for New Blogger to work out bugs. I will wait for a final notice before making the change. Hopefully, every day means that a few more bugs will be solved. New software is one area where waiting a bit longer to change can be a positive:-)

Photo Credit: morgueFile.com, Derek Lilly

This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

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