If you’ve been reading this weblog lately, you’ve probably noticed that the page loads rather s-l-o-w-l-y. The blame can be laid squarely at the comments system; I’m using enetation’s system. I’ve been very unhappy with its glacial pace, the regular unavailability of comments and the fact that you can’t format your comments with HTML. I think it’s time to switch to another system. Anyone out there know of a better system? (As of this writing, comments are off-line — again — so you might be better off just e-mailing me instead.
The other technical problem I’ve had is with Blogger, the service that I use to create and maintain this weblog. A number of old entries have simply vanished. If you were to go to the archives page or look one up, all you’d see is a blank entry with a timestamp (here’s an example, and it was a really good entry, too). I back up my site regularly, which means that it’s very unlikely I’ve lost any entry permanently, but it’ll still take some time and effort to get those lost stories back online.
enetation is a free service, and I can hardly be expected to raise much of a fuss whenever it doesn’t work. However, I’m a Blogger Pro paid subscriber, and I was expecting better.
Perhaps it’s time to move to Movable Type, the blogging software to which a large number of A- and B-listers have migrated. Unlike Blogger, you run Movable Type on your server, which means that you have considerably more control over it and can also back up the database. Movable Type also has a comments system built-in, along with many other goodies. I just wonder what kind of work I’ll have to do to move my existing Blogger-based entires over if I do make the switch.