A few months ago, I finally decided the blog needed to “grow up.”

Summary: Do your homework, and pick a place to host your blog and DON’T MOVE! It’s worse than changing email addresses!

Details for those without much to do:

I paid for a doamain and left the free service of Blogger. I yeaned for the improvements I saw in WordPress. I began a blog at WordPress (also free), and decided it would give me some additional capabilities to separate posts by self-defined categories, but, I was concerend that there may be control issues down the line, so I went to a paid for domain. I got a great deal, they offered WordPress blogging software and away I went.

Things wnet smoothly on setting up the blog, but….then I figured all the other sites who linked with me would need to be updated. The challenge: What blogs were they?

I left the old blog intact, for history, and many of the obvious links from other places would come there. I also could check at Technorati to see where the inbound links originated. There were quite a few. I began the emailing to the bigger ones, at first, requesting that the next time they were doing link maintenance to check and please update my blog’s address. Some did, some did not. You know, like asking all your family to update your email links in Outlook….’nuff siad.

One issue is not all links are actually direct links from those blogs and I embarassed myself once (but found a great blog….) when I sent an email and I wasn’t on the owner’s blogroll. So, scratching my head, I realized I had been linked from their blog because, they, as I, had signed up for like minded weblog groups, and their site now linked back to the master list at some other website….

So….I sent a few emails to the owners of the groups, asking for updates….not one of those have been changed. Well, looking at the Sitemeter for the original blog, not many people went there anyhow, but a few popped in from that source….

Now, several months later, the old blog does get hit, and, depsite putting a large banner in the header saying the site has moved and a link to the new blog, it just isn’t too successful.

There is another issue, and I’m sure it’s assocoatied with WordPress somehow: I used to generate a lot (well, ok, most all) of my traffic by taking advantage of the Open Posts at Mudville Gazette. I did this before using HaloScan by sending manual trackbacks. It was great for the ego, seeing people “show up” and better when the meter logged them in for more than 0 seconds. Now, despite following the directions for WordPress for trackbacks, my posts don’t show up at Mudville Gazette, and even trying standalone trackback programs, I still get an error message back. The strange thing is the inclusion of links for many, but not all other sites have worked. I’m still wondering about this (any hints would be good. Email or comments are welcomed!).

So, as I was trending upwards in readership, which gave me a sense of accomplishment, I’ve dropped off to about 1/2 the hits a month on the new blog. I still have a significant amount of hits on the old site, but combined, I’m still not where I used to be.

Anyhow, that’s my sad tale. If you’re not blogging yet, I hope this helps you in making some decisions about planning your first steps into the blogosphere more successful in the long run.