EFX2 vs Blogger

Since EFX crashed several days ago, quite a few bloggers have made their way to Blogger and other places to start new blogs. Most have done so with great reluctance and hesitation, approaching their new blogs as a temporary thing until EFX is revived.

Some have lamented the fact that Blogger isn't as easy to use as EFX was, and of how they miss their favorite features from their old blogs: comment tracking alerts, recent visitors track, extra pages, the community feel, and so on.

I acknowledge Blogger's shortcomings and I also miss these features from EFX. But Blogger has one very important feature that EFX did not have -- it is a stable site that is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. As far as I'm concerned that's the most important feature a blog hosting site can have. If the site isn't up and you can't access your blog or those of others, then all the fancy user-friendly features don't amount to a hill of beans.

And if Keith manages to cobble EFX back together again, I don't hold out much hope for it being any more stable in the future. Pointing this out is in no way meant as a dig to Keith. But let's face facts. Keith is just one guy who has other responsibilities in his life and can only work on EFX on a part time basis, as his schedule permits. There's only so much one person can do under the circumstances and it would be unfair to expect more out of him.

Blogger, on the other hand, has been around for eight years, and it has several people employed full time devoted to maintaining this site. We can trust Blogger to be reliable, if not the simplest site in the world to use. Upgrades have been made over the years, and this is something that will no doubt continue. And, best of all, it's free.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have invested a lot of myself into my writing in the three years I've been blogging, and I'd hate to lose all my work. Unlike many fellow EFXers, I had another shadow blog at Blog City, so I didn't lose anything.

Despite the unexpected loss of our EFX home, those of us who have created new blogs managed to find each other fairly quickly and, as it stands now, we've all linked together in the effort to maintain the community feeling. Likewise, despite the fact that Blogger is more difficult to use, most of us have also constructed attractive looking sites in fairly short order. I set up this site about two weeks ahead of the EFX crash, with Chica-X helping me to construct an attractive template. I know that she's subsequently been of help to others in setting up their sites.

We can recreate the community feel here if we are so motivated. If the previous week has been any indication, I'd say it's already well under way. We'll get used to how Blogger works, even though it can be a challenge now and will take some patience and time.

I don't know when or if EFX will return. If it does, I'll return there along with others to post there again. But I'm not going to focus on EFX, nor pin my hopes on it. I've got a damned fine looking blog right here, that I intend to use fully, and will continue to maintain, even if EFX returns. I would hope that others here will make the best of their new blogs also, regardless of what they intend to do in the event of an EFX revival.

Thoughts?