I have been thinking long and hard about micro.blog and how it fits in. From wondering if this will allow me to remove myself from Twitter, or if the platform will expand and grow into the masses, and how I see ‘regular blogging’ fitting in. This post only covers the last one.
Instead of pointing my Wordpress blog to publish on micro.blog, what if I just used micro.blog as a one-stop shop!? I started the journey of mirroring everything (that is possible) on my Wordpress site over here on my micro.blog site to see how it worked. I didn’t want to just jump without some testing, so here is a list of my finding on migrating. Some good, some bad, some in between.
Currently pointing to http://micro.burk.io but who knows maybe it will be http://burk.io soon!?
I also want to mention that the site I would be moving is a hosted Wordpress.com blog (Premium level $8/month), not a self -hosted Wordpress.org blog
Pro’s of Migrating from Wordpress to micro.blog
- A single place for both ‘short’ and ‘long’ form posts.
- The ability to have a theme that you can customize to be unique.
- You can have static pages linked from your main page. Be aware that these only support html and markdown.
- A bit cheaper at $5/month rather than $8/month. I love the idea of backing a “social network” with direct compensation rather than forcing shitty ads into my timeline or selling my data.
- There are first-party iOS apps (iPhone & iPad).
- There is a first party Mac app.
- Third-party apps are starting to pop up as well.
- You can map custom domains.
- Typo? Need to update data? All posts can be edited after posting!
Con’s of Migrating from Wordpress to micro.blog
- Importing posts changes image hosting from the current location to Micro.Blog hosting. I use S3 for image hosting, so the posts are very portable between platforms. I would love to see an option during import to not update hosting locations of images.
- No mechanism currently for uploading themes.
Somewhere in between depending on your usage..
- No ‘traditional’ commenting system. People can reply to you via micro.blog (must have an account), which would be ok for a couple of replies, but the lack of threaded replies would make it cluttered and hard to navigate. Traditional commenting systems are mostly broken trash, so maybe this is ok? Just something to be aware of for those looking to transition I suppose. Standard replies in micro.blog would work fine for me most likely.
- There is no mechanism for getting stats (page views, viewer locations, etc.). If this is something that matters to you.
- You can’t add authorized users as “editors,” “authors,” “contributors.” It’s your account.
With all this, it has to be understood that micro.blog was never designed to be a 1:1 replacement for something like Wordpress. I am personally really liking the fresh take on microblogging that micro.blog is building toward! For me, I think the migration would be a good move.
I am going to keep adding to this as new things are discovered, or new features are added! See anything I am missing? Let me know! Thanks!