Friday 4 August 2017

Moving to WordPress

Please find all new posts at ayfamilyhistory.com.

In December 2014 I had a company called Blog2Print create a bound-book version of my blog archive of 116 posts from April 2012 to November 2014.

pages from the first volume of my bound-book version of my blog archive


It came to 363 pages. I've now arranged for a second volume to be printed - 143 posts, 424 pages - to cover the period from January 2015 to July 2017.

I like having a paper record of what I have written. For some reason, electronic files seem impermanent. Paper is meant to last.

Having printed off the blog, I felt it was time to think about its future. Blogger, which I've been using until now, is OK, but I have decided to transfer to a better system, WordPress.com.

I looked at WordPress.org, the community-support, open-source, version, but with the commercial product, WordPress.com, I don't have to think about the cost and effort of setting up a domain name and installing and maintaining the blogging software. That's part of the WordPress.com package. I do need to pay a small amount to keep the site free of advertising.

I was able to export all the content of my old blog to my new WordPress site. I won't be editing previous posts but I am creating indexes, arranged into family categories. I think this will help to make more sense of what I have written so far. It will also help me to see gaps in my family history I might be able to fill in future blog posts.

I am looking forward to doing more research and writing about our family history. The Blogger site will remain where it is indefinitely, but from today new posts will be published at ayfamilyhistory.com.