For the last few months I have been working on moving my Etsy shop over to Shopify (harder than I expected) and moving everything else over to Ghost. It took me forever to compare everything, make charts, test sites, read reviews, obsess... until I stumbled over Ghost while researching Wordpress. Created by the original Wordpress developers, Ghost.org goes back to the initial intent - open source, blogging, free, do what you want.

What I want - is to create a new blog, have all my old blog material (15 years worth of posts!), a Library of all my books and class materials - AND make it all subscription based like Patreon. Except, I get to keep all the money (minus a tiny Stripe processing fee), unlike Patreon.

There is a hosted version of Ghost... Ghost(Pro) which also has a Concierge program which will scoop up all your material from your other sites and help integrate it into your new Ghost site! It was during this process that I started to understand just why a lot of these "easy" sites, like Etsy, Patreon, Facebook, even my Weebly website.... All those followers, customers, patrons, images, posts, and pdfs - belong to the host. In other words, if I want to move my posts from Patreon to my new site, I'd have to copy and paste each one at a time! And I can't download my Patrons and Followers and take you with me. The irony is that my outdated and long-neglected-by-Google Blogger sites? THOSE can be downloaded, moved, and uploaded to the new site.

There's so much that overwhelms and infuriates me in the tech world (as if my battles with my insurance company weren't bad enough, now I can't even log in because ransomware is holding my Harvard pilgrim account captive. What?!) anyway - it's so refreshing to actually interact with a human being who is actually - a human being!

I hope you enjoy the following email conversation which happened after many rounds of instructions of how to create xml files of my blog posts, which sites could or could not be salvaged, and other tech-y things (I'll skip over those emails! You're welcome)...

Apr 13, 2023

Hello!

I just wanted to update you on where we have got to with your project.

Blogger sites need a little extra work to get right, and they're all a little different, so we're reviewing the site archives we have to get things set up correctly. One timing snag is that we are all about to be out of the office for a week on a team retreat. I'm not sure we'll have anything for you before we finish on Friday, and then we'll lose a week before we get back to things.

I'll apply a little credit to your account for the lost time when we've completed the work as I don't want you out of pocket because of my diary, but I wanted to check that this isn't blocking any other plans?

Best wishes,
Jon Hickman

___________

I appreciate the credit and the heads up. I forget that people take these things called "vacations". As long as you remember my project when you get back, it will be fine - I can work around it. Gives me an excuse to focus on the Shopify store.

Sandy

___________

Hey, thanks for understanding!

The week is actually very hard work rather than vacation this time! The whole team will be getting together and it's usually a super productive time—last June we got together in Spain and in 1-week we built our 3 most requested features:

Built in search: https://ghost.org/changelog/explore/

Built in comments: https://ghost.org/changelog/search/

A member directory: https://ghost.org/changelog/explore/

So that's an extra carrot for your kind understanding—I don't know what we'll make this time but it'll be worth it :D

Many thanks again, speak soon!

--
Jon Hickman

___________

I was just teasing, I know you said it was a work retreat - but that does sound really cool (I'm a Geek, so that actually sounds more fun than a "vacation"). I could actually use a working retreat.

Side note: actually had a conversation with my teen last week where I said the words "When I was a kid..." (OMG, am I that old!?) but shocked her by completing it: "...if I wanted to play a video game, I had to program it myself!"

I'll check out those other features!

If I may request a feature... I'd like a... template?... for a page that serves like a library shelf with rows of books. When a member clicks on the cover image for the "book" (PDF), it pops open and can be flipped (scrolled) through, without leaving the library. Or a pack of trading cards, tarot cards, journal cards... etc.

Anyway - have fun! Work hard! I need more Features!

Cheers
- Sandy >^..^<

___________

Ha! Was I defensive :D

Another fun one to try on the kids (mine are 13 and nearly-10):

"...and when I did buy a game, I went to the newsagents, bought Mac User, looked through the ads, found a list, sent someone A CHEQUE and then I waited 28 days for delivery"

Don't regret it, Discworld for Mac was an all-time great.

That feature is more of a design thing, I think—it's not something we'd add to core, but you can achieve a lot with themes.

Speak soon!

--
Jon Hickman

___________

Haha! MacUser... Zork... Infocom... sigh. TRS-80 CoCo - I actually understood all the references in "Ready Player One" (the book). Ok, back to work.

Cheers
- Sandy >^..^<

___________

The movie was filmed here (Birmingham, UK). Not sure it's a great endorsement of our city that it can stand in for dystopian wasteland USA but everyone was excited anyway.

Tom Cruise also came here to film a Mission Impossible, and he famously went out for a curry which he liked so much he immediately had the same meal again. He's a weird guy.

Back to RPO—a fun book, but I didn't like the movie at all. Just left me cold. I also didn't like Armada at all...we watched Last Starfighter the other week and those effects might be shonky but it was far superior to Ernest Kline's take (the kids loved it).

Ok, I'll let you get back to work and I need to feed those kids, cheers!

--
Jon Hickman

___________

Yeh? Am I right? That was one of the most fun conversations I'd had all day!

If you'd like to see what I'm working on: www.teddybear-n-geekygirl.com

Tagged in:

Thoughts Process