Website Woes

You know, it always sucks when a site that you're a member of suddenly changes things and actually takes away features. I know that when we make changes to our software, we're cognizant of the fact that a feature that many people may not like are actually appreciated by a small handful, and if we're going to remove it, we should at least make it optional. Same goes with things on Facebook-- features that I'm sure very few people use but that I've come to rely on, are suddenly gone. And it's annoying. And frustrating. Especially when things are already buggy and now I no longer have a fallback fix (i.e. manually refreshing the RSS feed for Notes when it doesn't do so automatically). But hey-- it's free, I don't pay for it, it works for the most part, so I don't have much in the way of complaints.

But when it's something I DO pay for, then I'm going to be a little more picky about it :-P

I'm a little disappointed with Myspace karaoke these days-- the new layout is extremely buggy (of course, that is nothing new for Myspace) and now they have it set so you can't even VIEW member recordings unless you're signed in. I can understand restricting the ability to rate/comment to members only, but simply VIEWING it? That's ridiculous. So now I'm contemplating Singsnap. I've got a free account there, but lately it means nothing because they've been moving all their good songs to members-only. Plus, it's twice as expensive as Myspace membership (only because I got a great deal on Myspace and snagged a membership when it was on sale, nearly 50% off. And when it came time to renew, they gave me the same discounted price! Props to Myspace for THAT, at least!). On the other hand, they make it easy to embed their video player onto websites, making it easier to share than Myspace recordings.

That, however, raises the question of where I would embed such a video-- on my blog, right? Hah. That opens up another can of worms:

I'm really starting to regret moving from Blogger to Wordpress a year ago. The only things Wordpress had that Blogger didn't were:
1) built-in nested comments
and
2) per-post privacy settings.

However, these days, nested comments aren't really useful anymore because hardly anyone comments on the blog itself, and there are simple ways around the privacy settings. Some other disadvantages: I have to actually PAY to customize the theme to my liking, I can't embed anything but YouTube into my posts, and I can't put in JavaScript anywhere in the page. Blogger allows you to do all that-- for free. Sigh. And now my one-year subscription to the CSS editing capabilities is about to expire. I bought it last year on sale-- Black Friday ;-) I think I'm going to hold off on renewing this year to see if they offer the sale price again after Thanksgiving ;-)

Actually, I think I'm going to first re-examine whether or not I even want to remain on Wordpress.com. I know, I know-- I had really hoped that last year's move to Wordpress would be my final one. Seems like I've packed up and hauled off to different blog forums as often as I've physically moved within Santa Barbara. Feels rather flighty, and really-- needs and priorities change, as do the different sites and what they offer. Maybe I should consider registering and hosting a domain name of my own, that way I can change the underlying blog app whenever I feel like it. Hmm, something to think about.

Decisions, decision... any input from you, dear readers?