A few weeks ago I opened up my Squidoo dashboard to see a message telling me the “Big News” … that HubPages was aquiring “key content” from Squidoo, and that my beloved writing site, Squidoo, was going out of business.
Linda Jo Martin the Book Lady
A long and complicated story, that one.
I won’t attempt to explain it all here. Ask me in comments if you’re still wondering.
Anyhow, the upshot is that all my Squidoo pages will be transferred to HubPages sometime in September. I opted into the move almost immediately, so I’m hoping my pages will be some of the first to endure the heartrending transfer. I will totally miss my pretty and colorful Squidoo pages, but I also like the black and white of HubPages. It is a classy site.
The transfer of lenses to HubPages will not be without complex issues. The tech teams are doing their best to maintain the features on each lens. Most Squidoo modules will have equivalent HubPages capsules to land in… but we writers have been given a time limit of only four months to clean everything up and bring our work up to HubPages standards.
Because of this, I anticipate working very hard on the project, daily, from September through December. So much for Christmas! I’ll have work to do!
In anticipation of the work that needs to be done, I’ve created a new hub to collect information on how best to do a transfer of writing from another website into HubPages.
I’m going to miss the pretty background graphics of Squidoo, because on HubPages all the backgrounds are light gray. Oh well… what really matters is whether the page shares good and useful information, and whether it does well in search engine results pages. Right?
While planning my attack strategy for cleaning up lens-hubs, I created a worksheet that will help me track updates and changes to each page. This is what I’ll be using.
Each hub will have its own file folder which will contain this worksheet, and that will also provide a convenient place for me to drop in new inspirations and insights for future updates.
I honestly believe that the best way to prepare for writing online is to become very efficient and organized. Proper planning can make intense projects proceed a whole lot smoother than they will if work is done in a haphazard manner.
I look forward to this season of working on lens-hub editing with anticipation and dread, hope and excitement, and understanding and compassion for my fellow Squidoo lensmasters who are enduring the process. I’m sure only good will come from this. I feel the grief of losing Squidoo but also have the knowledge that change and movement are almost always good.
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