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Why 14 Blogs Became Boles Blogs on WordPress.com Business

For several years, I have published, and edited, and managed, a 14-blog strong consortium of blogs loosely called “The Boles Blogs Network” right here on WordPress.com.  It was a great delight publishing all those blogs, but now that WordPress.com is bundling services for single blogs, it started to become clear to me that I needed to condense and consolidate my blogs in order to keep them not just alive, but thriving. Out of 14 blogs, I initially kept three blogs:  Boles Blues, the newest and fastest growing, GO INSIDE Magazine, the first online entity that found great success in publication, and Urban Semiotic, the first blog I owned on WordPress.com.

Going from 14 to three blogs was an eye opener.  Everything was faster to publish and articles were easier to find.  As I began exploring the WordPress.com store, I saw a Pro Blogger bundle of services for $99.00USD per year and a “Business” class of service for $299.00USD a year.  Here is what the WordPress.com Business bundle offers:

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Are Google Voice and Blogger Next on the Axeman’s Block?

I am still devastated by the news Google Reader will be killed as a service on July 1, 2013.  As a writer and publisher, 50 times a day, I get all my clean feed news from Google Reader.  Sure, Feedly seems like an okay replacement for now, but what concerns me most about the demise of Google Reader is what that closing means for other non-tip-of-the-spear products like Google Voice and Blogger in the Google arsenal of free services.

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111111: Eleven Eleven Eleven at Eleven Eleven

Today is Eleven Eleven Eleven. 11/11/11.  November 11, 2011. This article was purposefully published at 11:11am this morning.  I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with all these ones standing in unison, but I am, and shall likely always be, enchanted:

The number one is considered “calming” and “essential” in Chinese numerology and that makes me question if all those ones in today’s date should be taken collectively or singularly.  I prefer to atone to the individual digit and take all the delights that come from pronouncing all those ordered ones.

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The Readability Review

I am late to the Readability party, but now that I have a seat at the table, I’m delighted to report I love the whole idea and driving purpose behind the product.  As a fan of Instapaper, I was surprised to see Readability so readily adopted by major RSS feed readers like Reeder.  I wondered what that red chair icon meant, and I wanted to know how Readability differed from Instapaper.

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Do You Know About.Me?

Do you know About.me?  I didn’t.  I do know.  About.me is a new website/social aggregator/homepage you create to connect things “About You.”  I guess.  I’m always sort of late to these burgeoning online enterprises, so when I read yesterday that About.me was sold to AOL for tons of money after only being live four days, I decided to hurry on over and grab a username and root around a bit to see what about the fuss was about and — http://about.me/boles — is now mine, along with all a bundled bucket of obnoxious TypeKit Fonts that still take forever to propagate and load on a page:

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The New Go Inside Magazine!

Welcome to the new look of Go Inside Magazine!  Go Inside Magazine officially started with the GoInside.com domain in 1996, but we have been publishing on the internet since 1990 as “Internet Insider” and under other transitory and transitional names.  For all those years, we were a static HTML magazine and then, yesterday, January 27, 2011, we made the big change to dynamic publishing — and Go Inside is now hosted on WordPress.com as the newest member of the now 14-blog strong Boles Blogs Network!

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Why the Boles Blog Network Moved From Movable Type Back to WordPress

Two years ago this Urban Semiotic blog was hosted right here on WordPress.com.  Then, we moved this blog first to Media Temple and then to Pair Networks on the — we were soon to learn — unwieldy Movable Type blogging platform from Six Apart.  Matt Mullenweg sent me a kind private note to wish us well on our departure for Movable Type.  This article details our Movable Type hoary road and the bright path we beat back to WordPress.

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