So, Moving Day has arrived. Blogger, (my previous blogging platform), was the old neighbourhood, a good start home, but a bit dark and dingy with no space to stretch your legs. The blogging platform equivalent of an avocado bathroom suite. Retro in a vaguely cool way, but also liable to irretrievably break at any moment.
Wix is the new neighbourhood. It’s brighter, easier to get on with, and the view’s much better for everybody, so welcome to my new/old blog on Wix. It's a cabin on the lake.
Every spare moment this week has been spent in attempting to recreate my existing blog entries since I started last November, and posting them here, like moving in the furniture you can't part with. Some of them have had a fresh coat of paint, a new bit of artwork here and there, but they’re back and ready to go. So why is this new site better?
#1.
Free Email Subscriptions.
The biggest problem with Blogger as a platform (and hence the biggest problem people have commented on) is that subscribing is a pain in the proverbial USB port, to the point where it’s virtually impossible. It seems surprising that a tech giant like Google (the operator of gmail) is so out of date it needs a third party to handle email subscriptions, but when that third party pulled their support a few years ago, nobody got the job…except by default maybe Mark Zuckerberg… So….you can now subscribe for free by submitting your email address at the bottom of the home page. Rest assured your email WILL NOT be used for anything else other than blog updates, and you are free to unsubscribe at any time. You won't get an automatic email for every blog post in any case, I have to write them. Consider them more like a weekly update.
#2.
Accessibility.
All the articles (blogs) that I write have their own preview tile, so you scroll through all the entries much, much faster. I appreciate not everything I write is unlikely to be of interest to everybody ALL the time.
#3.
Searching for what interests you.
My blogs have always had subject tags, but now you can view the main categories individually. Those main categories are:
General Music
Playing Tips
Songwriting
Playing Live
Classic Songs (under more)
Gear (under more)
So if you’re only interested in blogs containing guitar and/or ukulele lessons and nothing else, for example, you can choose to view the “Playing Tips” entries only.
#4.
More Interaction.
At the bottom of each blog you will find links to any other related blogs, and the opportunity to comment. There’s also a chat box hovering about, so if you’d like to send me a message we can live chat or it’ll send me an email. I wanted the blog to be more interactive, now it is! Those of you who’ve commented on blogs via facebook, like those who suggested “love” songs against my playlist earlier this month, I’ve taken the liberty of adding your comments to the blog itself. Hope that’s ok!
What I'm Hoping For...
So my hope is to continue to build this blog into a learning resource and sharing platform for everybody who wants to get involved. I’ve obviously got some personal goals for it too, as a kind of diary for my “musical activities” (which sounds much more mysterious than it actually is), but I’m equally interested in it being a way of us just trying to understand as much about the music we’re listening to or playing as we can. Hit me up with your suggestions for topics!
Record Time
Right let's have something to listen to, and this seems appropriate...'Moving' by Supergrass, taken from their eponymous third album, shot at Glastonbury in 2004. This song has got a great change in dynamic!
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