While approaching the 2nd anniversary of launching this blog, it’s come to the point where the blog on it’s current platform (Blogger, FTP published) is getting too big to manage. That means the I’m finally starting the migration over to WordPress. It’s an exciting change, however, the timing is just bad, in the sense that I don’t have enough time to do it. 
300 Strong
It was hard for me to believe as the number of posts here approached (and surpassed) 300 last month, but indeed there has been that much Aloha for Maui to share in the past 2 years. With that many posts and content, and the many limitations of of the FTP publishing model of Blogger (as opposed to their hosted model) means that just a simple post like this may take 10+ minutes to publish. The label (aka tags or categories) files that get generated, for example, where up to 75+ posts in some cases. And since Blogger doesn’t support paging for their FTP blogs, those files where too large to be published, let alone load if someone wanted to view them.
Enter WordPress
A few of my fellow bloggers are either already using WordPress or have made the switch over this year, and have nothing but good things to say about it. As a matter of fact, my newest site, Maui by Photo, is running on WordPress, so I too have seen what all the buzz is about first hand.
The migration process seems simple enough, however, I’m working on few steps to make sure search results and links from other sites that have gone up in the last 2 years are forwarded on correctly once the new blog is up. All of the posts and comments will be moved over; it will just be managed better.
What to Expect
It will likely take at least a week or two until everything is up and running on WordPress, so you won’t see any new posts here for awhile. The comments section will still be up, so you can still leave messages and responses to older posts without fear that they’ll be lost a week from now. Once all the kinks are worked out and I’m happy with the migration, expect to see more features and jazz at our blog, too, since I wouldn’t be moving to WordPress if there weren’t so many neat things to do with it.
Mahalo for your support during this transition.
Oh, by the way…
I mentioned earlier in the week that we’re still working out the details of a trip in September for the Maui Photo Festival. Well, it’s all but a done deal now. We’re going! It’s hard to believe that we’ll be leaving for Maui in just 30 days (Sept. 13th), and that it will be our 2nd trip this year, but it’s happening. Once the blog is migrated over, I’ll try to sneak in a few posts about what we’re hoping to do with our free days and what I’ll be doing during the festival and workshops. Until then, find me on Twitter as @webnelly if you have ideas, questions, or comments about this next trip, and the little get-together we’re planning on the 20th.
Aloha,
– Kris
