Template Temptation

BaT's second anniversary is a month and a half away, and we've been considering a blog redesign. The simple black-and-white look is starting to tire. But, quite frankly, we're not very good at creating our own template, and the packaged designs from Blogger have never been exciting, either.

And now, four years after it bought Blogger, Google seems to be finally interested in improving it. We've been tempted for a couple of weeks now as Google promotes "the new Blogger." We have been hesitant to switch, however, because primarily we don't like change. Secondly, we're worried that some of our previous posts will be lost in the migration. We're already using a customer template, and we're not sure how the exchange will go.

The new Blogger promises features that BaT has been missing. New design features are available, which could making updating our look easier. Feed options are increased, and we have received several requests for RSS and Atom additions. Publishing is suppose to be easier, and there's a label feature which would save time I now spend searching for previous posts on similar topics.

We were almost convinced to switch. Until ...

We read this from Professor Althouse, who did move to the new blogger and is not happy. At all.

Oh, how I wish I hadn't switched to New Blogger! I'm over the problem that the switch itself took three hours, though I'm still irked that there was no warning that it would take such a long time, which would have tipped me off to do it late at night instead of in the middle of the day. And I actually like some of the new features: I get to skip the word verification stage in the comments, I can use labels creatively, publishing is quicker. Maybe there are a couple other things. But the feed doesn't work anymore. ...

If you're going to bring in something important and new, you ought to wow people with it, not make them wallow in regret that you've deprived them of the old. I have defended Blogger for years when people have told me over and over to quit. Ironically, the main reason I've stayed is that I'm assume that anything new will come with its own set of problems.

Of course, her site is much bigger than BaT, and I don't care about lost traffic since I don't have ads and about 30 people a day visit. I'm more concerned about losing posts (even though I have the text backed up) or not being able to switch back to old Blogger if there are problems with the new version.

So, I'm asking for your help ... at least the help of my fellow Blogger users out there. Have you switched, and what's been your experience?