We're moving, y'all

This is a hard post to write and I don't really even know why. First of all just to get it out of the way, my blog isn't disappearing or anything. It's just going to be... elsewhere.

Let's take this back to the start so this makes any kind of sense.

I've been blogging on Blogger... well, since it was Blogspot. It's been 10 years, y'all. I have been through things. Remember how everyone had little mp3 player looking things in their sidebars? Remember when it was like a contest to see how many things you could pack into your sidebar and how annoying most of them were? Remember, um... what was it. Pyzam! Remember Pyzam layouts?

No, seriously, let's look at what screenshots I have in random files and see what we can find.

My first layout I remember was black because white text on a black background is so great to read. The closest thing I can find online even is this:

And I apologize both for the image quality and the fact that I can't even link to a source for this. It seems the blog they were on is gone now. I'm gonna put a link here but I warn you to click carefully as it's currently nothing and could be anything in the future.

The only difference between mine and that one was the background of mine was this picture:

Because why wouldn't I keep the background picture from my first layout and not an actual screenshot, past self. Where did Pyzam even get these pictures for all these things? Did they commission artists or were we all going around with stolen artwork on our blogs?

I mean. We were all going around with stolen artwork on our blogs, lets be real.

Looking for that layout, I even checked out the Wayback Machine, but that only goes back to 2010 on my blog. Wanna see what my blog looked like in 2010? I may need a drink for this. Or at least more tea.

Click this to enlarge it. Trust me, it's worth it. Let's go through this one problem at a time.

First of all, the main content thing is so tiny. Everything is super squished! I sure had to write less back then to fill the space, though XD Everything had to be squished, though, or you couldn't fit three columns, and of course you needed three columns for all your widgets. Plus I had a way smaller computer screen back then and things didn't use to adjust for smaller screens as well, so if things were really big, they'd look awful on my laptop.

Should we talk about all the things I could have gotten a takedown notification/possibly sued over? (Do you remember that blogger that got sued over using a picture without permission? That was a... thing.) The background - found it on Photobucket. The image on the header - found it on a random site. The hearts in the menu - found 'em on a google image search. The buttons a friend made, but honestly I don't have a clue where they got the images from.

What else on here should we talk about... the Twitter button site was legit at the time, but I think Twitter kinda made those sites disappear. I'm not entirely sure that 100 book reading challenge ever got updated, and I'm pretty sure I didn't ever hit it. The Blogoversary widget died! I'm still upset about that. It was so nice and small and classy.

That random website list is so... well, random. A couple of them don't exist, only one still updates. The webcomics, I think I only read one of now. (Also go ahead and judge 17 year old me, I don't mind. Honestly I don't even get some of these anymore.) A couple don't exist anymore. Most of the blogs I used to follow are gone, too.

Last thing before I get serious: What was even with the chatbox thing? Were comments not good enough, we needed random messaging things? Multiple people mispelling my name, too. I used to get called Liana a ton? Like on my blog, where my name was plastered all over things. Also if you scroll through it... I KNEW IT. I knew people were using the Tweaked review for school work! Oh man, that used to bother me so much XD

Serious time. The main reason we're talking right now is since Google+ is being taken down, so are Google+ followers/the Google+ follower widget. And honestly I can't remember why I have a Google+ follower widget and not a Blogger follower one? Did Blogger followers go away for a while there when Google+ followers became a thing?

Honestly I'm not sure, but looking at either, my follower numbers haven't moved in a while, frankly, and my stats aren't great. And I feel like a lot of those followers aren't active people who actually come around and interact or anything anymore. And while I'm being honest, Blogger isn't doing it for me very much anymore. There's just a lot of things I don't enjoy about it now or that I find frustrating. I also wouldn't mind a little bit of a fresh start, to kind of rebuild a little and get a little bit of a clean slate in some ways. All of this has just added up to something I've been thinking about for a little while now.

I want to try something different.

So, we're moving. For the rest of February, things are going to post both here and on Wordpress. Same address as this but wordpress instead of blogspot, and I'll link it a lot including this post. I'm not going to link any post hosted here after this to social media - this is just so people can adjust their links as posts come up in whatever reader or service they use. And also to give me time to do all the things you need to do when you move your 10 year old blog to a new platform and also realize all the things you haven't updated in several years.

This post is long enough so I'm going to end it here.

There's going to be a lot of changes around here and on the Wordpress blog, so please be patient with me while things are going on. It's a lot of work, and there's only one me.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments before and I'll try to answer them as best I can. Thanks for spending 10 years with me here, everyone. I hope we have a lot more together and you make the transition with me, or if you're new, I look forward to seeing you there.

Peace and cookies,
Laina