Welcome to the new site

http://instagram.com/p/5oiMnFqGZQ

It’s taken me all weekend, but I have successfully transferred Alexroddie.com from its old home on Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress installation. I’ve been a Blogger user since 2003, so it’s been quite a journey. But I was starting to feel the limitations of Blogger and the new platform is going to be far more flexible in the future.

What does this mean to you, the reader? Very little – all links will continue to work as before, and all the old content is still here. Those of you who subscribed to the old RSS feed may need to update your settings. You can find the RSS link in the toolbar to the right. The old permalink for the Blogger front page (which was itself a bodge, proving how unsuitable Blogger had become) will now redirect to a 404 error.

The new site has been designed to be readable, responsive, and modern. All of the ramshackle old code, some of which dated from as far back as 2007, has been ditched entirely. You can efficiently browse the new site on any modern device, from a 4″-screened smartphone to a desktop cinema display.

The only fundamental change  from the old way of doing things is that Google+ comments are out – in fact, I have disabled comments entirely. This is due to the wave of comment spam that I’ve been struggling with for over a year now. I welcome commentary and interaction from my readers, but most of that takes place on social media or through email, and tends to be more personal and interesting than a posted remark that might go unnoticed amongst an ocean of spam. Many other blogs are going the same way and I think it’ll be a positive step.

I’m well into my second decade of blogging now, and I look forward to serving my readers and clients for many more years on this site. Thank you all for stopping by!