Do you have a Windows Live Spaces blog? They're going WordPress now...

Howdy everybody,

I saw a tweet about Live ID blogs going to go over to WordPress, and had to check it out. Here's a post on the Windows Live blog about it:

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/09/27/wordpress-com-and-windows-live-partnering-together-and-providing-an-upgrade-for-30-million-windows-live-spaces-customers.aspx

I've got two Spaces blogs, one about Windows Server stuff and one about Windows 7 stuff.  The Windows Server blog is actually the resurfacing of my first blog. I've not been there much this year because all I've been doing is writing the Mastering SPF book.

I like my Spaces blogs (and liked my first blog there when it was msn spaces, remember when?), and will be sad to see them go WordPress (or go away entirely by next spring). I didn't really like wordpress, back in the day when I was checking out different blogging options online.

Keep in mind this "upgrade" will literally change the URL of the blog (but they'll keep the Spaces redirect so people's links, favorites, RSS feeds should still work). If you have stuff hard coded, be sure they still work after the change.

I thought if any of you have a Spaces blog (or two) you might want to be given some warning. Apparently a lot of people don't realize that Microsoft is making this change.

If you sign in to your spaces blog, you will immediately be taken to a page that leads with "Windows Live + WordPress."  They don't absolutely demand that you move your blog to WordPress right away, but they do state that the "clock is ticking" if you don't "upgrade" and that the deadline is March 2011.

(if you don't want to upgrade, you can temporarily continue to use the blog as is, download all your blog entries as html files, or just delete your site now...)

I am disappointed that Microsoft is basically pawning off 30 million people's blogs to WordPress (if they'd wanted to be there, they already would be). It would have been great if Microsoft had invested a little on the blogging capabilities of SharePoint and maybe moved those 30 million people to SharePoint online instead.

Some of the things you lose in the "upgrade" are your drafts, your theme, gadgets, guestbook, and lists (I spent a lot of time making and updating my lists...).

Nonetheless-- for those of you who haven't logged in for a while, I thought you should know-- It is not a ruse, you haven't been hacked-- your Spaces blog is going away next spring, the clock is ticking, unless you "upgrade" it to WordPress.

Now you know.