Blogging for me has always been something I enjoyed, but I managed to not do much of it. I let the tools get in my way far too much. In the early days of this blog site, I wanted to create my own software. First it was a Linux based site, running Apache, Postgresql, and PHP/FI. The a few years later (well over 10 years ago now) I switched over to a Windows-based site. That switch happened to coincide with my hiring at Microsoft. It was hosted with a variety of providers including WinISP (an MS internal project that seems to be dead now). When Telligent got started I switched over to Community Server. I entered their theme building contest with an embarrassment of a theme and won a free license. After a few years there, I moved to Graffiti. Both CS and Graffiti were hosted on my current provider: Server Intellect. But it was always a lot of work. There was no real community around either Community Server or Graffiti and although creating styles was easier than doing it yourself, it was still hard. And then there was a security problem recently. Since I was hosting it myself, I had to deal with fixing it. Ughh. 

Blogging has become a chore. But I don’t want it to be a chore. I want to have a site that is easy to maintain, easy to tweak, and no real management on my part. I want an engine that doesn’t feel like a kludge, ruling out a lot of the industry leaders. 

I have long loved Diggnation, having watched a good 90% of all of their shows. Recently they have been advertising SquareSpace. I always skipped over the ads so never really saw what it was about. Then I saw NewToYork.com because of a blog post about it’s footer design. From there I saw other Squarespace sites, then the main site and the videos. I was amazed at how easy it all looked. I was ready to change over.

The last few days have been a lot of fun (and some frustrations). I think I have a site that I can live with at squarespace and this blog will be moving over very soon. I hope this causes the last few subscribers I have minimal downtime. I should work out all the kinks very soon.