Recently WordPress 3.0 has been released so I went ahead and upgraded my WordPress installation to that new version. How hard can it be?

Well, it was super-super-super simple… I’ve never experienced such a painless upgrade for any Web application I ever used. Just click one button, enter the FTP credentials and let WordPress upgrade itself. After upgrading WordPress prompts for a few changes (all written down here) and the whole thing just works. It is as simple as using an Apple product!

So congratulations dear WordPress, for the new, great release and the fact that you take care about your users!

Almost immediately after I migrated from Blogger to WordPress I started receiving comment spam. Not a lot, only 1 post every 1-2 days, but still annoying.

Luckily there are several solutions to fight Spam without the need for every user to register with the blog… and based on a recommendation from _m3 I installed the Akismet WordPress Plugin. What should I say, it works… Akismet is eating my spam and leaving through ham, works like a charm – thus highly recommended for WordPress installations!

(Image from flickr)

Recently Blogger announced that they are going to shut down their FTP publishing service. On one side I think this is not a very smart move as they’ll loose a lot of customers, but on the other hand I fully understand why they are doing this. FTP is really old, causing them a lot of troubles and prevents Google from implementing cool stuff (i.e. a mobile view for the blog).

So, what to do with my (this) blog? Initially I migrated over to a custom domain (still with Blogger), which required me to setup some redirects (mbaierl.com/blog -> blog.mbaierl.com). Not a big deal, no need to wait for the FTP migration tool, worked great and smoothly. But suddenly I had to display the Blogger Bar on top of my blog. Drawback 1. And I did not see statistics within my known Webalizer interface. Drawback 2. And: I want control!

So I started to look for alternatives – and as I manage 3 blogs in total I stumbled across WordPress MU and started the migration:

1. Installing WordPress is super-simple, I’m really impressed! Just needed to make sure it is secure by setting a few file permissions correctly.
2. WordPress can import all data (posts, comments) from Blogger – and it really works! Only Youtube videos don’t come through, so I had to re-add them manually (check out the “Smart Youtube” plugin!)
3. Luckily I did not post a lot while being on the Blogger custom domain as this required a migration of the image files.
4. Migrating the template was the hardest part – yes, there are tons of themes available, but I wanted to keep my own for this blog… but the documentation is really good and it was just a matter of hours to get a working template that integrates into my site.
5. There are tons of useful plugins – i.e. Akismet for Spam protection or WordPress Mobile Edition. That’s great and gives me way more flexibility and freedom than Blogger did! There is even an iPhone App!

Right now I’m very satisfied with the features and the performance and highly recommend having a look at WordPress if you need to migrate away from Blogger because of their FTP shutdown or for any other reason….