Mark Gilroy

Bringing Books to Life!

The Move From Blogger to WordPress – Why? Why Not?

I used Blogger for seven years.

Is Blogger best for you?

I just moved to WordPress.

Is WordPress best for you?

I am mostly done with moving my blog from Blogger to WordPress. Look around my site and you will find there is still a lot to update. But I’m far enough along to feel reasonably comfortable in inviting you to stop by. (No housewarming gifts needed, but thank you.)

So why did I make the move from Blogger to WordPress? I must have seen a need to change. And why did I wait seven years? I must have found reasons to stay where I was.

If you are a blogger or considering setting up a blog, my experience might help you understand the best platform for to use and a little of what goes into making a change if you determine that is the best course for you.

 

EASE OF SET UP

There is nothing easier to set up and run for a blogger than Google’s Blogger platform. I write. I don’t program and design. Blogger was the perfect place for me to start. It was so easy I actually had time to learn the features and customize my website to a reasonably attractive and professional degree. (I did pay a few bucks to a designer to create my own custom header.) Building and changing the layout and adding or moving features was as simple as dragging elements around. Because the layout templet was visual, you knew immediately and exactly what you were going to see with each change.

Another thing that made Blogger easy was it was free.

WordPress requires an immediate decision. Self hosting (.org) or free hosting (.com). If you choose free hosting, you are restricted from adding plugins or widgets like AdSense that monetize your blog. If you do the self hosting you have to install WP into your hosting service before you start setting up and designing your blog.

With WP you next decide on whether to use a free template or a premium template. Either way, the dashboard view is not nearly as intuitive and visual for building your layout and adding features. I’ll quickly note, after the first four or five hours of arranging and rearranging elements, WordPress has gotten quite easy to work with.

I chose the self-hosting option to have the most control and flexibility over my blog, whether or not monetization is a big issue for me. I chose a premium template from a company that has been developing templates for years. I think that provides better insurance that my template will always be up-to-date with the newest version of WP. [Read more…]

The Man Who Killed JFK

Roger Stone builds the case that LBJ was the man behind the assassination of JFK.

I was in kindergarten when President John F. Kennedy was shot. To say that the Kennedy brothers were popular was an understatement. The two hottest Halloween costumes at the class party that year, less than a month before JFK was shot, had been John and Bobby plastic masks. My first inkling that something big had happened on November 22, 1963, was when I got in the car and the mom who was driving carpool that day said nothing but only sobbed the drive home.

I heard Roger Stone do a radio interview on his book and realized I had read little to nothing on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I didn’t go see the Oliver Stone film. I found it strange that I’ve read books on the Viet Nam War and Watergate – the other two defining political events in my growing up years – but I had never taken the time to accept or reject the Warren Commission. It’s interesting that in the back of my mind I’ve sort of known there are two self-contradictory popular beliefs that guide popular perception on the Kennedy Assassination:

  1. the Warren Report is seriously flawed
  2. anyone that presents an alternative view of the Warren Report is a kook

So who does Roger Stone – longtime political strategist for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush, and George W. Bush – say killed JFK? Since he has a picture of President Lyndon Baines Johnson on the cover and subtitles the book, The Case Against LBJ, I’m not giving a spoiler to tell you where this book is going. (Note: Stone is equally hard on Republicans as Democrats; he is an equal opportunity sledgehammer.)  [Read more…]

What Is the Biggest Media Format Globally?

Global dollars spent on media entertainment, including books, magazines, movies. music, and video games.

What media format generates the most revenue dollars worldwide? A lot of people will be surprised to discover that the good old book publishing industry is larger than movies, magazines, video games, and music in the global media and entertainment industry.

The global estimates for book publishing include trade, educational, and science-technology-medical publishing. It is fair to argue that educational and science-technology-medical publishing should not be used to compare books against entertainment. But then we have to remove those categories from television and magazines – and the comparison gets impossible.

With the explosion of digital publishing, there are those that have declared the “book is dead.” But the oldest communication technology is still alive and kicking!

The data was gathered by Rudiger Wischenbart Content Consulting for the International Publishers Association 2013 report.