Wish me luck...

[ithilwen]

...for I have decided to take on an ambitious project. In the wake of LJ's latest "update" fiasco, I've decided to go back and change the photo links in all my posts to they point to SmugMug rather than my LJ Scrapbook. I'm no longer confident about LJ's long-term prospects, and keeping the Scrapbook up is the only reason my journal is a paid one. Once I get all the links updated, I can let my LJ account lapse into a free account, used only for commenting over at LJ.

(I'll still crosspost, at least for a while, but I'm thinking about closing commenting over there in favor of directing people to comment over here on DW. That way I won't lose comments if/when LJ goes down for good. Since I allow anonymous comments on my DW journal, I don't think that will be too much of an issue - but if that change would bother you, please let me know!)

Since my journal goes back to March 2003 and I have hundreds of photo links to fix, this is obviously going to be a long-term project! But I think the pain will be worth it in the end.

Comments

[eveiya]

Not a bad idea at all. I don't understand what LJ are playing at with these latest changes, which to me don't appear to 'improve' anything but make many things slower and more difficult. I suspect it's some ploy to make more individuals and communities get paid accounts; if so, I don't think the strategy will work for them. These days I would not be too surprised to wake up one morning and find LJ just gone altogether, never to return, with no warning at all.

I'm seriously considering doing what you suggest here with comments on my journal. And in making a point of always commenting on DW instead of LJ on the journals of those on my f-list who cross-post. I've been cross-posting my own entries for a while now, although I haven't yet imported all my back entries from when I started my LJ in October 2003 to DW, and some older LJ pics are still stored in LJ's galleries. I've never been a very frequent updater, so I haven't got so very many entries to deal with, but it'd still be a big enough task to go all the way back.

I doubt if I'll ever abandon LJ or even give up my paid account there although I increasingly resent giving them my money, because there's still too many folk on my f-list that I want to keep in touch with who are only on LJ, or who may have accounts here on DW but don't currently cross-post.

Good luck with the project. I guess winter's the season for it. :-)

[ithilwen]

What's prompting me to do this insanely huge project is the knowledge that as long as my picspam links point to the LJ Scrapbook, my journal's not really backed up here on DW. If LJ goes down, or if they decide to kill Scrapbook, then poof!, all those old posts are hashed. I doubt SmugMug's going to have any long-term viability issues, so it's worth it to take the precaution of changing the links now, while I can still view the photos in those entries.

I'll be keeping my LJ account, if only to comment and read over there. But since I run NoScript and Adblock Plus on my browser, it may not be worth it to keep it a paid account once I'm no longer depending on Scrapbook.