I went out early in the morning and I saw my shadow, long and lanky, as the sun rose over the Sandias. And my shadow asked: “Why do you continue to put up with it — the unwanted upgrades and continuous frustrations you’ve been having with WordPress, Adobe products and other post-processing apps that have been causing you so much trouble? You have other choices you know! You don’t have to be stuck in the same routine like Bill Murry in ‘Groundhog Day’ experiencing déjà vu all over again, and again, and again…”
My shadow had a point, and I remembered that the site I host T&L Photos on had added a blog feature as an option, which wasn’t available when I set up Photo of the Day, Etc. on WP almost five years ago. I logged on to T&L Photos, checked out the blog feature, added it to the menu, made some changes to the look and feel of the site, and I have officially moved my daily blog to http://photos.tandlphotos.com.
As I thought about it there are several advantages to moving my daily blog to T&L Photos, besides getting away from the constant frustrations I’ve been having with WordPress. I no longer need to process and resize my photos for WordPress. I can upload full sized jpegs to the blog on T&L Photos, which will allow me to start making the photos available for sale. I only have to manage one site for both photos and the blog. Since T&L Photos was originally set up for both me and Laurie, long before I started blogging, she can include her sketches and paintings along with her photos.
I’ll see you on my new, old site.
Off Center & Not Even 
Looks like a nice service over there, much better suited to photography of course. Wondering though, what are the issues you are having with WP?
WP keeps wanting to force their “New Experience” for posting blogs on me. I tried it for a while and I loath it. I don’t like the look and feel, the functionality or the changes to the options for creating new blog posts. With the “new experience”, I have to do several steps to get my photos to display the way I want them to instead of one step to upload and another to insert the photo. I keep going back to the classic mode, but they will eventually take it away. There are lots of other little things that I just find annoying.
Indeed, the “new” editor stinks, I avoid it like the plague. Once in a while, I look around the web for alternatives to WP as I think it will eventually become less user friendly. Why can’t they just leave things alone… An alternative to self-hosting WP would be nice. Are you going to take this site down at some point? Just being nosy!!
Since I just renewed all my WP stuff in November, I’ll leave the blog as is until renewal comes up in November 2015, then I’ll take it down and move the domain.
You really need to decide what you are blogging for and how important the WP community is. Even moving to a self hosted site moves you outside the immediate community. I like the community, but the frustrations aren’t worth it for me. I dumped Facebook a couple of years ago mainly because I didn’t agree with the user agreement, but it was a similar deal with stupid changes that drove me crazy.
I have never used FB, never will. Nasty. I self-hosted some years ago and do recall being outside of the community, it wasn’t pleasant.
I really enjoy the strong sense of community inside the WP world and would miss it very much. I suppose I could learn to not despise the new editor UI, but how long until something is changed that really makes me nuts. WP makes these stupid little changes, and they make no sense.
Got me thinking now!
I like the new/ old site. I’ve saved you to my Favorites. Until I can figure out how to properly follow you. 🙂
Thanks! There is an rss feed to subscribe on the blog.
Great. Thanks.
so long…see you…
Ciao!
Just as I’ve been tuning up all my old WP sites lying around the world wide web….. 🙂 )))))))))))))
See you over there.
Thanks, Susan! You are self hosting. It makes a difference. I’m not going to go to the time and trouble to self host a WP site.
Yes, you are right – it makes a big difference. I have one that is *not* self hosted, and it is a much bigger pain than any that are self hosted. I started in 2005, and the gardening one has been around since 2007. I neglect it, then write, then neglect. I’ve had a reason to revive it for a specific purpose (as you know), and was amazed how many hits it continued to get in my absence.
But, the self hosted ones are much easier to deal with!
I have an account where you are now, and cleaning up those galleries is on my list of to-do’s this spring.!
If classic editing is done away with I will scream. I detest the new one and refuse to use it. I will try to keep up with you, Timothy. I really enjoy your work. In fact, I myself have been thinking of promoting my work as in money. Hmmmm ….. Just a thought …. Love, Amy
It’s something to consider. Thanks!
I will check out your new/old site.
Thanks, Brenda!
I like the photos! Great site!
Thanks, Brenda!
I will continue to follow you over on T&L Photos. Glad to have met you and Laurie over on WordPress!
Thanks, Lavinia!
Timothy, very smart shadow you’ve got there! I’m going over to your new site to have a look and follow! Christine
Thanks, Christine!
BTW I can send you sunsets when I do them.
You cast a long shadow! I’ll have to follow you wherever you go!
Thanks, Cindy!
I will definitely be checking this out…sounds like a positive move for you. Janet:)
Thanks, Janet!
I thought it a bit odd for you to move all of a sudden, but if WordPress really brings in this new mode I’m out too, I despise it and refuse to use it. I put your url on my reader, good luck over there.
Thanks, Karen!
I don’t like the new WP admin – at all! I won’t count WP out. They provide a great platform for free and the search engines love WP, These changes could be the results of putting the cart before the horse (geeks with new toys). Who asked for the changes and why mess up what works!?! Anyhoo, I like your new/old site. I wish I could get emails of the latest post from it?
Thanks! You can subscribe by rss which will show my posts in your brower’s rss reader.
I’ll keep following you on T&L Photos, Timothy. Wishing you all the best!
For me, I don’t see any difference with the new or the old worpdress.Same options, different wrapping. People don’t like changes, but if you stick around, you will get use to it. WordPress is convenient, because all the blogs you like are concentrated in one page, the reader. Following different blogs on different platforms, is not as convenient. It’s a shame. I loved your blog. I won’t promise that I will follow you on the other platform, because I know that I can’t keep up with different platforms, but I wish you the best.
Hummm so moving backward is also moving forward… Somewhere you’ve given a physicist an enormous headache. 😈
Good luck with the new old site.
Thanks, Teagan. I’m not sure how my new old site is moving backward, as it as so many more options for doing things than WP. If you are talking about film? Well, I really don’t think it’s moving backward.
No, no… I just meant going back to what you were doing before. It was just a silly whimsical joke that was meant to be a compliment. Hugs.
Understood!
I’m not sure what rss feed is … I’ll hopefully work out how to keep getting updates. Hopefully I’ll get there … I’d miss your daily posts.
RSS feeds show up in you browser. Firefox asks you where you want to see them — bookmarks or bookmark bar in mine. Safari puts them in the @ in the bookmark sidebar menu. I don’t know how IE or Chrome handles RSS. Thanks, Julia!
Wow i spent all my time over the holidays trying to figure out how i can move my blog forward beyond the wordpress community. Much of it was to also figure out how to deal with the posting changes and like you mentioned, if they take away the classic mode i will just scream. I’m in the works to migrate to a self host and i can’t wait. I’ll see you on your new/old site.
Keeping up a good website is a challenge. I’ll give WP credit for doing a good job of allowing people to easily build within the WP community, but sometimes it gets to a point where you have to get out with your own site.
I absolutely agree with you! And WP is a great way to get started, but life is about growth and moving forward. I read a comment someone had made on your post about people not liking change in reference to the WP changes which is causing you the frustration. Yet the change you’re making is upsetting Them? ugh! I’m looking forward to self hosting and growing.
As I mentioned, if the site that hosts T&L Photos had a blog option in 2010, I would have never been on WP. I’ve used T&L Photos for years to give people access to the images from photo shoots and events I’ve covered. What I currently have showing on the site is a fraction of what I can turn on for public view. The T&L blog doesn’t have the community aspect of WP and has limitations as far as a blog goes, because it’s designed to be related to the business of the site and not so much a social blog. I think it’s good to move in that direction.
With the long shadow, were you able to predict whether it’ll be 6 more weeks of winter or early spring? 🙂
I’ve added your new/old site to my RSS feed. WP has this nagging problem of “perpetual improvement”. Some are okay, others not so much. This latest thing with the editor, WP is making the same mistake Microsoft made with Win 8/8.1 – assuming everybody will eventually shift to tablets and smartphones to write/manage their blog(s). Having been with WP since 2006, the latest revamp has to be the worst ever.
Early spring for NM and CO.
One thing I learned early on doing programing is that what I think is an improvement, other people may not think is an improvement. I had to migrate a web site/app to our server for a client that another programer from another company had written. I talked a lot with the programmer while migrating the site, and a little bit with the main user. I made some improvements to some clunky pages that the original program said he had trouble with. He didn’t tell me the trouble was those clunky pages were exactly how the client wanted them to look and work. I had to reprogram. After that, once we got a program set up and the users like how it works, unless the client asked for changes, we only made changes necessary for security.
I can certainly understand how once you get used to the way a program works, you don’t want to change, especially if features you rely on get removed.
Apple is making their desktop and mobile OSes merge closer and closer. There are both positives and negatives to it. I upgraded to the latest Apple OS, and that was a great excuse for some third party photo processing software to quit supporting my favorite version of their suite. The two later versions are unstable and missing a lot of functions I used in my favorite version. So I’ve just quit using the software.
Doing film again has helped keep me sane with all these upgrade issues.
I want to follow your new blog.
Thanks! You can subscribe via RSS.
Bellissime immagini! un caro saluto. Marisa
Grazie, Marisa!
I agree with the resizing issue of WP. I think it does poor job on it.
Thanks!
Very sorry to see you go, but I am sure you and Laurie will have a great time with the T&L site. And, more generally, very best wishes to both of you for the future 🙂
OH man! I was just thinking about you this morning. Can I reblog them from your website? I saw this the other night and now I need to see how it works. Let me know! MM.
Thanks for asking about it Michelle. Since my new blog is not tied into WP there is no way to reblog it. You would have to paste the link to it in a blog post.