After much consideration, I have decided to move Beetles In The Bush to its new home here at WordPress.  To those of you coming here from the old site, thank you for following the link.  To those of you who have stumbled upon this site from somewhere else, welcome!

The decision to move was not easy, nor was it taken lightly, but it was something I had been considering for quite awhile.  The debates about WordPress versus Blogger are well chronicled, and you will find many who strongly believe in one or the other.  For me, the choice was not so clear – each offers advantages relative to the other.  What really attracted me to  WordPress, however, was the horizontal menu bar linked to static “Pages” that are separate from chronologically-ordered posts – ideal for expanded profiles, tables of contents, indices, annotated link galleries, etc.  I toyed with different methods for creating these in Blogger and actually found a way to simulate them along with the menu bar.  However, it took a lot of effort learning HTML code, and the results were just not very crisp when compared this standard WordPress feature.  Frankly, I’d rather spend my time writing posts rather than HTML code.  Moreover, I’ve always been impressed with the clean, professional look of the WordPress templates – very attractive.

Nevertheless, the idea of actually moving my blog was still a daunting thought.  Would everything transfer or would I have to start over?  Would I lose my photos?  Would the post formatting get messed up?  The more I researched it, the more feasible it seemed, and when I actually created a site for beta testing I was immediately impressed with the functionality and ease of use.  Setting up the new blog, transferring the posts and comments from the old site, adding the “page” features that I had so long desired, and all the fine-tuning to achieve the “look” that I wanted only took a few hours.  The hardest part was deciding on a template.  Alex may think I simply copied what he did, the truth is I previewed both the initial blog and the finished blog in every template offered by WordPress.  I liked the clean lines, crisp fonts, and simple elegance of this layout.  I also debated about whether to replace the old banner, but ultimately decided a move to a new site deserved a new banner to go along with it.  I suppose switching sites might mess up page stats, Google rankings, and other technical issues that concern serious bloggers.  I’ll need to keep the old site live, since that is where all the photos from the previous posts are housed – that might ‘steal’ hits that would have otherwise come to this site when people do Google searches.  I guess all I can hope is that people landing on the old site will follow the redirect.

So, welcome to the new Beetles In The Bush – I hope you’ll take a moment to explore the new pages.  I’ve included a short biography in About, a Table of Contents with a complete list of posts (and recommendations for some of my favorites), a description of my personal Insect Collection with links to inventories for certain taxa, a complete list of my Publications, and an annotated list of Links that I’ve found useful for identification and nomenclature of insects and plants.  Comments are always welcome, and feel free to Contact me directly if you have specific questions or comments.  Don’t forget to update your links from:

http://beetlesinthebush.blogspot.com

to:

http://beetlesinthebush.wordpress.com