Loud Talkers, beware: We can hear you even if we want to tune you out! I know many Loud Talkers want to be heard beyond the ears of those they are speaking with and that’s why I have no problem relating this overheard conversation between two middle-aged men sitting in a coffee shop.
UPDATE – April 9, 2012: The Boles Blogs Network is now back on WordPress.com! We will write another article explaining the why and how of moving back. We’re leaving this article online because it might benefit someone else seeking to export their WP.com blog to a standalone WordPress installation.
Welcome to my first new article since the Boles Blogs Network had to leave our hosting setup on WordPress.com because of a strange billing anomaly that threatened the viability of our publishing network core.
Here’s what happened…
Two years ago, when I moved my blogs from a self-hosted Movable Type installation over to WordPress.com, I had the expert help of Automattic employee Lloyd Dewolf (Budd) — who is no longer with the company — to get all my thousands of posts imported into WordPress.com blogs. As a blogs-warming gift, Lloyd waived the fee for domain mapping for the first year for all my imported blogs. We added a few other blogs during that first year, and I paid the domain mapping fees.
A year passed.
I paid for another year of domain mapping upgrades for all 14 blogs.
Another year passed.
I am now unable to renew, and pay for, my domain mapping upgrades as you can see in the screenshot below. There was a major “Upgrade” to the way WordPress.com now handles their shopping cart that somehow broke my ability to pay my way on the service. Notice there’s no “Renew Now” button for me to click for BolesBlues.com? The domain mapping says it was purchased by “wpcomvip” and not me and that’s a problem.
A man slowly ascends the stairs of a tall building. He has an assault rifle strapped to his back and carries a megaphone in one hand. When he gets to the roof he looks down on the hundreds of people walking down the street and calls for their attention. He watches carefully as they gather around in the street below and when just enough people are listening he lifts the assault rifle in one hand and puts the megaphone to his mouth and says, “Ladies and gentlemen… I own an assault rifle illegally!” Within minutes he is arrested and nobody is surprised. Why then would someone do the online equivalent and provide photographic evidence to the world, including the police that eventually arrested said someone?
If you aren’t aware of the cruel but, thankfully undying, meme — “Dogs Against Romney” — then you can get an eyeful of an update by looking at the March 5, 2012 cover for the New Yorker Magazine:
