Vox, a blogging community that is owned by Six Apart, the same people who use to own LiveJournal decided to close Vox in what is a quick closing, versus Yahoo!’s gradual close of GeoCities in 2009. Vox plans to phase out their services on September 30, 2010.
Vox was known for their free service that offered a variety of modern and clean templates for bloggers to use. Versus other services (even in comparison LiveJournal), it was very limiting. However, it was a community that served its purpose.
Vox is encouraging users of their service to venture to Typepad, but I am encouraging users to sign up at WordPress.com, especially if they are planning to become a serious blogger. Why? More freedom, more flexibility in the service, a friendly community, and a constantly updated software.
It just makes a lot more sense. WordPress 3.0 had well over 10 million downloads on WordPress.org for self-hosted bloggers (meaning they have their own domain and own web hosting account), which does not include the amount of WordPress.com hosted users.
A long time ago I tried out Vox on a whim as it was a curiosity at the time. I never did anything with it as I just did not find the community as put together like LiveJournal. In fact other than a few people here or there telling me that they used Vox was the only way I knew people actually used it. While I may never have been a loyal user, I am sure there were many. It is sad to see a good service go, but I hope that in closing that we can find better opportunities for bloggers out there.
WordPress does have a Vox importer plugin.
However, I would recommend bloggers who have used Vox to not use their suggestion of signing up for Typepad.
Just for kicks I decided to see what TypePad was like and frankly I find it to be extremely cumbersome to deal with. Vox was a bit less cumbersome than TypePad but it was almost as annoying to deal with. I second the idea of switching to WordPress whether self-hosted or for starting out to get a feel for WordPress. TypePad isn't worth it.
Definitely recommend WordPress for migration.
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Did the same thing at the same time joined Tumblr too and found it was way much easier to upload, photo's & video here than Typepad. Working with diferent blogging tools isn't very productive so I'm contemplating to migrate one more time and bring everything together. That's why I'm browsing for user response reviews with WordPress.
All these sites like vox come and go because they all do more or less the same, which is publishing content. In the end, only 2-3 of the large sites will remain, and wordpress is one of them. This is why we both recommend users to switch to wordpress.
I too gave Vox a shot, once upon a time and like you it just didn't do it for me either.
I also have to agree with you. If you have to leave Vox, then take a step up and go with WordPress.com, it's not going to be closing any time in the foreseeable future. And if you are really serious about blogging it's probably time to buy a domain name and install WordPress for yourself. Time for all you Vox users to take the plunge and join the rest of us in WP pool We'd love to have you join us!
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This is yet another example of how important it is to get your own domain and own hosting account. Imagine the people who had taken blogging seriously over there. Now they are stuck migrating everything to a new domain or else losing years of work.
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Good comments are beneficial to the readers and the blogger. If you post a comment, the readers who read through the comments will see it, and if you are one of the readers, and you read a useful comment, it will benefit you.If you make a suggestion for the post as a comment, the blogger might improve the post. But if you are making a suggestion for the blog, use the contact form instead, or not it wouldn’t be relevant.