Preparation For Bad Business

Lately, I’ve been spooked by this news and what I see at GreatestJournal, which is a journal built in the same fashion of LiveJournal.

It’s just a precaution, but just in case LiveJournal takes the same plunge that GreatestJournal has, I’m doing a monthly backup of this blog to WordPress. I’d hate to lose three years’ worth of writing to the result of poor economy and several unfortunate business transactions.

I’ve been doing some half-hearted looking for a new server, anyway. As much as I love LJ’s privacy options, it doesn’t provide the type of public exposure I want. Maybe this is foolish, but I want more hits, more readers. I had investigated Blogspot, but I honestly just don’t like the name of the server–it just sounds so awkward with those consonants– or the association with Google, the ever-growing giant of Internet business.

At the first of my panic to find another server, I signed up with InsaneJournal which operates off the same Open Source code as LiveJournal. But they refer to each account holder as a Patient and to each community as an Asylum. And they have a little mascot in the top corner of every page that says different snarky or smart-aleck things every time you visit a different page on the server. Not very professional and not something I want to look at several times a week.

It was also a matter of how exactly to copy three years’ worth of writing over to somewhere else. But when I read this article, and poked around at their privacy features, I found that WordPress would be a good fit.

Still, if LiveJournal hangs on and continues to support, I’ll continue to stay. I love the communities I belong to here and the friends I have associated with particularly through LJ. I’ve grown attached to the layout of this, too. But I feel prepared if something happens.