In gardening, it is common for saplings to be initially planted in controlled, ideal conditions and once they outgrow their initial station, they are transplanted into open locations which offer unlimited potential for growth. The process comes with its own set of risks, and not every plant or tree will survive this abrupt change; those that do, flourish. The choice involved in transplanting, between stagnation with a promise of survival and growth with a risk of annihilation, is a tough one to make.

Today we have taken that risk. Avalokanam, which has so far resided in the comfortable, protected, Blogger environment maintained by Google has today moved into a self-hosted WordPress instance. Blogger was great to start with – it provides a beginner with all the basic tools required to set up their blog and start writing without being bothered by technical and other considerations. The ease of use, however, comes at the price of limited flexibility. WordPress (the self-hosted version), on he other hand, provides limitless opportunity for customization and fine-tuning. It also requires greater technical expertise and has a financial cost associated with hosting and any premium themes or plugins that you choose to make use of. It’s like moving from a rented apartment to your own house. While you now have to take care of everything yourself (from water and electricity connection to security, sewage treatment and garbage disposal), you also have the freedom to paint it any colour you want and even make changes to the structure of the building as you like.

Now that the migration is complete, what remains is for readers of Avalokanam to take a look and let us know how they like this new avatar. You are encouraged to try viewing the site on both PC and mobile to see how it renders, and let us know if you find any issues anywhere (yes, we’re requesting your help in testing this new version – if you’d be kind enough to do it for free 🙂 ) . While you’re at it, also feel free to drop a comment to tell us what you like and what you’d like to see different. Since you are a person who cares enough to read our opinion on various topics, your opinion is most valuable to us!

Thank you for your continued patronage. Have a great time reading and exploring!