Locked in by legacy

Legacy is a nice way of saying “old and dated”. Hence, the discussion of the challenges posed by legacy systems is a perfect topic for the curmudgeon.

I write multiple blogs. I am easily bored so it seemed like a good idea to use different software for each blog. The blogs would look different and the administrative experience would be different. When I switched from running my own servers to renting space on a commercial server, I was able to take advantage of special install scripts. Companies write scripts that install server programs and the companies that sell server space purchase these scripts to making program installation easy for customers.

As time goes by, the effort that gets invested in a blog accumulates. My original blog, created in 2003, has more than 1000 posts. The other two blogs have been around for far less time and have far fewer posts, but still the accumulated time is substantial. So, here is the issue. The script written to upgrade these more recently created two blogs corrupted the blogs. Bluehost, the company providing server space was able to help me revert to the earlier version, but damage was done to the database. Not the fault of Bluehost. I am not identifying the script company.

So, what does this have to do with legacy systems. I am a captive of the old software. I cannot upgrade and to move the posts to new software, I must manually copy and paste the posts and resubmit any images. So, if I have 500 or posts, this would take considerable time. The question is do I put in the effort and manually upgrade or do I stay with a system that frustrates me at present and is likely to present future problems. I have decided to invest the time to switch – a half hour or so each day.

I have also decided to take the opportunity to rename what I have decided is my microblog. It will be called “blurts” to indicate a series of short statements. I have a long form post blog and a short microblog focused mostly on resources I want to save and share. The new system allows import and export functions which will offer me an alternative to dealing with the database backend.

I have already experienced one benefit. I disagreed with what someone wrote two years ago. For whatever reason, he noticed the reposting of the comment and wanted to know if I was trying to pick a fight. I will have to think about that. It is nice he finally read what I had to say about some of his claims.

This being limited by our past commitments is a problem in many areas. Sometimes, I it is worth the extra effort of starting over. Now, back to the process of copying and pasting.