[yourname].i.ph. Unang dahilan kung bakit ako nagsign-up dito ay dahil sa URL, ang ganda di ba? hehe=) That was still last year pero mapapansing nuong Setyembre lang ang una kong post dito. Yun ay dahil dati ay naguluhan ata ako sa interface nila, ‘tas hindi ko rin nahanap ang pinagkakaabalahan ko nuon, user-defined pages. Pero maganda naman ang URL so go!
Ease of use. Bumalik ako dito after kong tanggalin ang aking blog sa awardspace.com, dahil sa isang personal na istoryang hindi ko ikukwento, at natuwa ako sa version 2 nila. Nadalian akong iset-up ang blog at baguhin ang mga settings. Ni hindi ko na nga kailangan umalis pa sa main page ng blog dahil andun na lahat ng configuration.
Support team. Ang galing, you send them inquiries, bug reports, etc. and they reply as soon as possible. Tatlong beses ko sigurong nagamit yung Live Support kung saan makakachat mo in realtime ang isang i.ph team representative. Talk about service.
Features. Natuwa rin ako sa ibang features bukod sa blog, yung picture gallery tsaka music blog. Ilang kanta rin ang naiupload ko dun ‘tas madali pang isama sa post, kaya ok. I tried to find a third-party site to do just that pero wala akong makita. Kung pwede lang sana gawin yun sa multiply, hehe.
Nasabi ko na bang I love the URL? Ngayon, sasabihin ko naman kung bakit ako aalis ng i.ph.
Slow Servers. Ewan ko lang kung ako lang ang nakakaranas nito pero ang bagal magload ng blog ko na ito. Kahit na ito ang una kong binubuksan, nauuna pang lumabas yung mga ibang sites na binubuksan ko, tulad nung sa awardspace. Pareho lang naman kaming nasa Pilipinas kaya ewan kung bakit ganun.
Restrictions. Users could not alter the any html concerning the blog. For that, they have given the menus that will let you change templates, some general predefined styles for each template (and a very limited set of templates), the font and sizes. And I think that’s it. Masyadong limited yung control mo over your blog at dun nag-ugat yung ease of use, dahil sa konti lang naman talaga ang pwede mong gawin in the first place.
Framed scripts. This I hate the most. Users could not add javascript into their pages. You could add widgets, but…. BUT! these widgets are isolated in a separate frame and locked in a different subdomain. Walang kawala. Yes, magwowork naman yung mga widgets but not nicely. First to consider is how much vertical height would the widget take up? This is ok with widgets with height settings like my quotebox, but what about those with dynamic content i.e. Google Reader’s shared items, Twitter updates, etc.?
You either come up with widgets inside frames with scrollbars or, like me, ended up with over-allocated spaces to ensure non-overflowing content. It took me a while to know what the minimum height I could allocate MyBLogLog so it would not scroll.
Another downside of this is impaired functionality. Stats logging for example would not work in its fullest if it is placed on a separate frame. I.ph has a built-in plugin where a pop-up would preview links in the body of the blog. Yes, only the body ’cause it will not work on links inside frames, so good luck on blogrolls. Sayang di ba?
User-distrust. Nabasa ko sa forum na kaya raw ganun ang access sa scripts ay dahil sa security reasons. Huh? I mean, what could we do with javascripts? We couldn’t blow up our office or something. Hehe, wala lang. Javascripts by the way are client-side scripts so servers would only transfer the code as part of the page and the processing would be done on our browsers. Sana malaman ko kung anong security reasons ang sinasabi nila para maliwanagan ako dahil wala talaga akong ideya.
Calliope. What is Calliope supposed to be? Tingin ko e modified wordpress ito na idinagdag lang yung mga restrictions na sinabi ko kanina. They did everything so as not to make you touch any code. So you could just click some buttons and be happy after. Ewan ko kung bakit hindi na lang wordpress ang ginamit?
If I were just a regular blogger, then I would settle with a nice URL and standard features but I like tweaking a lot on the code, so I am now leaving i.ph. Ni hindi ko na nga malipat yung mga posts ko dito e, hehe. Because there was no way to do it but manually. Well, so long, farewell, I love to say goodbye!
F o l l o w m e t o
Hi there. We’re sorry to see you go and I am hoping that I can convince you to give I.PH another chance. Just to clarify, we are powered by WordPress. Calliope is the engine that allows for point and click, drag and drop customization as well as provides granulated privacy options.
We truly appreciate your kind words and we have taken your feedback under consideration. Truthfully, we’ve heard it from other users before. This is the reason why we’ve addressed those misgivings in the upcoming version which we will be rolling out this year. There will definitely be less restrictions regarding HTML and scripts. We’ll even allow users to create templates from scratch. Loads of new features will be included too, as well as making such a feature rich service even faster. I hope that, along with all the things you love about I.PH, will be enough to make you stay. Drop me a line if you want to know more about our future developments. Thanks again. Blog on!