Well that brings matters to a head

WordPress 3.0 is out, and that means something has got to be done about this here blog-a-ma-thingie. I've been thinking about what to do for a while and I've made no decisions but now is your comment window. Obviously I haven't been posting very much lately, partly due to busy-ness and partly it's because it is very surprising how much blogging can be replaced by Twitter. But here's the key bit: I'm tired of being a WordPress admin and I don't need to be hosting my own Apache web server in 2010.

There are several suggestions to go from here:

1. The blog could end with a whimper not a bang, and I simply take it offline.


2. I could switch to a hosted site somewhere:




1. I could switch to either something that runs WordPress or something willing to import a WordPress archive to preserve the existing almost 800 entries.


2. I could switch to something more social/link share-y. This probably means Tumblr, although I haven't looked at it in any depth. This would likely mean there's no place for the existing entries to migrate so this is a cross between end-with-whimper and the preserve-it-all camps.




3. I suppose somebody could make a cogent argument why I should continue to run my own deal. I don't know what that would be but hey, I'm asking for comments!

I feel a little like I still want some sort of web presence somewhere. I still want to make the occasional post that is too long for Twitter and I'd like to still have a "hub" to link together my Twitter, Flickr, and whatever else I want to put there. The big question to my mind is how much value I assign to migrating the original posts. There's a really interesting discussion here about archiving ephemera. Of course, no matter what I decide I'll make an *archive* of the blog, but is there any responsibility here to keep that stuff online? Does anybody really care what I wrote about Magic The Gathering Sets five years ago? I barely do, I have trouble imagining anyone else does.

Please don't take this as any big internet drama. It's just that I don't want to be the guy responsible for keeping current on the anti-spammer technology anymore. It's interesting to me to discuss the value I should put on posts from 2003.

There have already been detritus jettisoned from the blog in the past: the first year of the blog pre-Movable Type is still available, but you have to know the URL, and I never did put "Pic-A-Day" back online after some conversion or another (was that on MT? My how time flies!). So part of me says "Hey just figure out what you want from a new site and go find it. Move forward, and nobody cares about the old stuff.", but part of me feels like there is some value in the history, in the continuity.

Anyway, sound off if you have opinions!

Comments

[whiskey]

On a number of occasions, I have found myself looking through your old blog entries for a particular Tim-ism or tech factoid. Your reviews and prognostications peppered with snarkyness are a welcome departure from an internet festooned with either extreme of rampant consumerism or devout environmental conservation.

My only hope for your efforts is that it will not become a chore or some additional busy-work to add strain to your schedule.

For what its worth, I have no tolerance for twitter. I need more context and content than 140 shortened characters can convey.