Suddenly everyone had the power of the press.

I won’t go into the ramifications this had on democracy and the printing press-based media. But the ramifications were GOOD.

But Blogger and Prya Labs ought to get a Nobel Prize.

But it’s been 10 years and now, Blogger sucks. Granted, it sucks less than it did before, with nearly daily outages and lost posts. But it still sucks, relatively speaking.

Consider this site. It’s a wish list that long time users want Blogger (read “Google,” the company that owns Blogger). They want the ability to create stand-alone Pages (just like WordPress has had for years). They want support for Gravatars (which WordPress has had for years). They want to be able to add captions to images (which WordPress has had for years). They want a wide selection of themes that work on wider monitors (which Blogger has had for years). They want an easy-to-use MORE button (which Blogger has had for years).

We’ve got that HERE. You can get NOW here at The Blog Peoria Project that Blogger MIGHT offer in the future. Blogger won’t reply to your email with a phone call if you ask nice. Blogger won’t go out and look for a theme or a plugin you want to try. Blogger won’t take a look at your HTML. Blogger won’t help you migrate your site somewhere else. Trust me on that. I hate to lose members, but I am committed to the idea that bloggers OWN their own posts, pics and comments.

And Blogger won’t tell lawsuit-threatening attorneys to take a hike.

And blogger won’t help you syndicate your site. Take a look at the expanded blogroll now in use at Peoria Pundit. I cannot do that for ANY site hosted by blogger. I can do it with any self-hosted WordPress or Typepad site. Not blogger.

And Blogger doesn’t give Peoria-area bloggers the power to link to nearly 50 of their neighbors by dragging a “Global Recent Posts” widget or a “Global Recent Comments” widget onto their sidebar.

So hears MY deal: To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Blogger.com, I am extending my help to ANYONE who wants to migrate away from Blogger to WordPress here at the Blog Peoria Project. I’ll help you move your posts, your comments and your photos. I’ll set up redirection so that people visiting your old Blogger posts will be sent to your shiny new WordPress site.

I have never charged anyone to blog here, and I don’t charge for support.

If you want to move, contact me.

This one is an introductory video that is designed to give new users an overview in how to use their spiffy new blog. As I download and post more of them, we’ll get into how to do more advanced things.

I’ll tag all of these as “video” and put then in the “how-to” and “site news” categories.

Enjoy: overview.swf

And by “gets deleted,” I mean “I deleted it” or “I lost it in the site migration.”

In any case, you probably need to get into your blog’s “dashboard” to make fixes.

So, how do you do that when you cannot see your site to click on “login?”

Simple. Visit any other Blog Peoria blog and click on “login” and then enter your existing username and password. You will be taken to that blog’s dashboard, and it’s a simple matter to redirect the page to the controls for your blog.

There’s a login button right at the top of the Blog Peoria Network homepage.

And it all else fails, contact me and I’ll send you a temporary password

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

And the bad news: These numbers are not going to change much, no matter what you do. All bloggers can do is not get in the way.

And make no mistake, you WANT people to contribute. A blog isn’t a blog unless there is two-way communication between readers and the blog author. All we can do is not get in the way when that 0 to 1 percent do want to0 contribute. Make commenting easy. Don’t turn off your spam filters and moderation queues, but check them often and rescue trapped comments. Toss up a harmless poll every once in a while.