Going Dark and Some Other Random Blog Changes

I know my blog has been going through a lot of changes recently. And the latest one is especially dramatic. I have moved from a predominantly white/light theme with dark text to a predominantly dark theme with lighter text.

So, I am curious, how do you feel about the change? Like it? Is it easy to read, does it display well on your browsers?

This theme also highlights the various categories up front at the top of the page – something I quite like because it highlights the variety of topics covered in this blog.

Another change is the addition of a new WordPress plog. Couple of weeks back, the folks at WordPress introduced a new “Import from Posterous” feature that I used to import my Posterous plog into WordPress. Well, the Import feature worked well, and now I have two WordPress blogs linked together :).

While doing all these hi-jinks, I realized that WordPress photoblogging themes could use a lot of improvement. They are just not as easy as Posterous. Although Posterous does not have many customization features, the basic Gallery display is excellent and does not require any manipulation at all. With WordPress, I loved the Monotone and Duotone photoblogging themes. They display the photos really beautifully but really they are not suitable for Gallery style of pictures at all. I eventually settled for the Steira theme, just because it displays Gallery photos quite neatly. If you are not very sure by what I mean when I say Gallery, see this.

By now, you must be wondering why I am moving my blog from Posterous to WordPress if I am happy with Posterous. Well, the simple answer is I was just curious as to how my photos would display in WordPress; and just wanted to play around and experiment with the Import feature :).

Some other rough edges I saw during the Posterous import process:

• Videos embedded in Posterous appear as attachments in WordPress. This sucks big-time because I then need to manually edit the posts and embed the video, which kind of defeats the purpose. I definitely would not recommend importing a Posterous blog to WordPress if you have a lot of video/audio content.
• Posterous has a lovely option that allows users to download all the images in a post as a single zip file. WordPress does not have this option. It only provides a link that allows you to download them through Posterous, which makes me suspect that deleting my Posterous blog would result in a bunch of broken links in my WordPress blog – not something I want, which is why I am ending up retaining dual blogs with the same content.

I am sure there are probably many other gotchas that I haven’t spotted just as yet. In short, if you are considering moving your blog from Posterous to WordPress, do not delete your Posterous blog. Also, play around with a variety of themes. The traditional photoblogging themes provided by WordPress may not always suit everyone’s needs.

How about you guys? Has anyone attempted the move from Posterous to WordPress? If so, how did it go for you?