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Looking for a new host for stories

Posted: November 12th, 2018, 11:36 am
by Pony
I've been frustrated with Slideshare for sometime now. It's making it difficult to read my PowerPoints whether I embedd the PowerPoint or not. Honestly I'm ready to leave Slideshare and move my stories somewhere else. I know Authorstream is an option for the PowerPoint format. But I'm thinking about getting away from that format and switching to something more mobile friendly. As more people are reading stories on their phones.

I'm having trouble deciding between Livejournal, Dreamwidth, and Tumblr. I already have a Livejournal so I'm leaning more towards that way.

But my question for you guys is: why do you use the one you use? And is there's any tips or tricks to make uploading stories any easier?

Thanks so much in advance. :D

Re: Looking for a new host for stories

Posted: November 12th, 2018, 12:00 pm
by itsjulie
All I can say is Blogger because that is all I have ever used.
I tried wordpress years ago and didn't like it.

Re: Looking for a new host for stories

Posted: November 12th, 2018, 12:16 pm
by Teresa
...and I prefer wordpress - but I use a self hosted blog, not wordpress.com - which didn't give me enough control.

Re: Looking for a new host for stories

Posted: November 12th, 2018, 12:28 pm
by katrisims
I use a mixture of things for different purposes. I had a Livejournal for the longest of times, but when they changed their TOU and filled it with Russian law, I got uncomfortable with it and migrated over to Dreamwidth. (DW has a handy automatic tool that I used to import my old entries.)

For my observational BaCC I just write in Open Office and copy paste to Dreamwidth directly. As for my plotty stories I prefer the slideshow format (plus that's what I've used from the start), so I first upload them to both Slideshare and Scribd and then share both versions embedded, as someone may prefer one or the other. I kind of prefer Scribd these days myself, as the full screen button in Slideshare embeds has been broken for a longish while. I still upload both formats though. It has crossed my mind to try out Google Drive for slideshows, as Fuzzyspork did so on her OWBC a while back, and it seemed to work well. I haven't gotten around to actually trying that though.

And yet for my picspams, I use one more thing, Tumblr. Picspams got tedious at some point, first re-sizing pictures, then uploading, then organizing them in LJ/DW... It was driving me nuts, especially as my picspams were quite large. I tried out Tumblr and found it much simpler for just sharing pictures and a bit of text: no re-sizing, no separate uploading, just picking the pictures and writing text. I tried out larger clumps of pictures at first, but later settled into setting up a queue in a "picture a day" style, and I currently like it. I can set up the queue when I have time and then I'm all set for like a month and can play and write more in peace while the queue runs.

I don't think I'd be happy to post my more storylike stuff just on Tumblr though: it'd be hard for me to keep track of the whole if I posted plotty stuff in tiny pieces, and I feel like it'd be hard for readers too. Hence I still use DW for that. And I post progress reports on my simming on DW; nobody probably reads those but well, I still like to do that for myself.

It's a bit complex, but I suppose it mostly works for me.

Re: Looking for a new host for stories

Posted: November 12th, 2018, 12:37 pm
by Jenn
I use Wordpress. I can't read Tumblr and don't go there unless there is cc I want badly. My internet can't handle all the pics that it tries to load and it's just annoying. I can write, drag and drop my pics and post it right then or save it as a draft and keep adding stuff to it.

I have no experience on anything else.

Re: Looking for a new host for stories

Posted: November 12th, 2018, 12:43 pm
by simsterlyrock
I use Tumblr because it's so easy to upload the pictures directly from my computer and I don't have to deal with uploading them to an image hosting site and copying the URL over to Livejournal. I still use LJ for a few of my stories here, but I don't like how long it takes to upload the pictures and put them in the entry. I'm just very lazy. :lol:

Re: Looking for a new host for stories

Posted: November 12th, 2018, 1:23 pm
by Ani-Mei
I still use LJ, have for the last 11 years. I still use Slideshare it's been behaving but I now save my PowerPoints as PDFs before I upload them to Slideshare, it cuts down on the file size when it uploads. I have a Wordpress that I got for whenever my turn came around for the Sims 3 Round Robin I joined a while ago, but it's LJ I use most often.

Re: Looking for a new host for stories

Posted: November 12th, 2018, 2:10 pm
by Pony
I didn't even think about Wordpress and Blogger. I have a Blogger too. It's ancient but I have it. I may put up a test story with several of these to see which one I like. I like the drag and drop idea for Wordpress. I don't want to spend a ton of my limited sim time editing pictures.

Re: Looking for a new host for stories

Posted: November 12th, 2018, 3:02 pm
by heatherfeather
I've used blogger and wordpress, and they're both really nice. The reason I use wordpress instead of blogger now is because when blogger was bought by google it got linked to my google+ account, and that's kind of weird for me since it's my real life account. Wordpress allows you to upload a decent amount of pictures with their free account; it lasted me through 8 generations of my legacy, and now I use flickr to upload my pictures.

I also use tumblr to post snippets from my chapters and extra stuff. I think reading a story on tumblr can be difficult since posts can easily get lost in the stream and you end up reading stuff out of order. It can work really well for lighthearted stuff, though.

Re: Looking for a new host for stories

Posted: November 12th, 2018, 3:38 pm
by Nevermore
I use LiveJournal. If you want to go down the route of not using slideshows, I recommend uploading your images on a site like Imgur first. The allotted image upload limit might seem like enough at first, but for a simming blog it will go quick. And your user pics do count in that amount to.

That's what I do. Upload my snaps on Imgur, then embed the links to the images in my posts. LiveJournal is very easy to use, with minimal formatting. It is user friendly for phones. A friend of mine reads my sim stories on his phone.

Re: Looking for a new host for stories

Posted: November 12th, 2018, 4:05 pm
by Livvielove
I use Blogger and really love how much flexibility it gives me, but it's not for everyone.

The only thing I would say is to be careful with Tumblr because that's a very difficult format to read for a lot of people. I usually just skim through posts on Tumblr and post teasers there, as I always end up getting stuff out of order via Tumblr (as it posts newest first... so I'd be reading most chapters/pictures backwards). Plus the tagging situation is always a mess for me.

That's just me though!

Re: Looking for a new host for stories

Posted: November 12th, 2018, 7:15 pm
by simsterlyrock
Livvielove wrote:I use Blogger and really love how much flexibility it gives me, but it's not for everyone.

The only thing I would say is to be careful with Tumblr because that's a very difficult format to read for a lot of people. I usually just skim through posts on Tumblr and post teasers there, as I always end up getting stuff out of order via Tumblr (as it posts newest first... so I'd be reading most chapters/pictures backwards). Plus the tagging situation is always a mess for me.

That's just me though!
Luckily with Tumblr all you have to do to make the posts show up in the right order is add /chrono to the end. That's what I do when I post the links to my weekly updates of my BACC here. :) Then the posts all show up in the right order.