A technical, about-the-blog sort of post

There are some neat things abrewin' on the Blogger front - which means I'm agettin' antsy.

Recently, I flirted with the idea of moving Reverly over to TypePad. Well, "flirted" isn't really accurate. I went over, signed up, began to play with the interface and prepared to export the content here, import it over there.

In real-life terms, think of it as flirting, exchanging phone numbers, getting a call, agreeing to meet up for dinner, going on the date and leaning in for the kiss at the end of the night.

In the end, I couldn't quite lock lips, as it were.

Not that I felt guilty -- I've had every intention of getting my own domain and buying myself MoveableType for quite some time now -- but Blogger begged me to come back home and offered up promises of some sweet lovin'.

Blogger Beta, baby. Doesn't it just purr?

If you're not a blogger (or at all into webby design stuff), most of the new features that will be offered with the Beta won't make sense -- ease of template modification, labels, the speed and ease (for us, anyway) of dynamic publishing. But it's pretty good news. My big thing is the label addition -- I'll be able to file posts under categories, which means you and I will be able to click and peruse all of the posts similarly labeled. This is a very good thing. I can, for instance, write about something that happened a long time ago, post it with a label of "past" and you'll know that it happened a long time ago. Not, say, two days ago.

That was one of the biggest things that TypePad offered me over Blogger. If Blogger was going to offer it, problem solved. I cancelled the free trial and came back home.

There is one problem, though. "Gradual launch." Boo. I have no idea of when these magical features will become available to me -- and now that I know they're out there, I want them now.

The kicker? If you set up a NEW blog, you can hop right into Beta. If you happen to have, say, more than FIVE YEARS OF POSTS on one blog (an even earlier seven months of posts on another, by the way), you have to wait.

Dear Blogger: You and I have come a long way, baby. And I'm here for the long haul.

So how about you, uh, show me a lil' love? Eh?

By the way, if you could take care of that whole, nasty, "Hey, Vix, you have to fill out the word verification in order to post" thing, that would be lovely. I assure you - only a real, live human would come up with these rambles.

XOXO,