Windows Live Spaces has been very good to me. I was able to start and keep an active blog with photo albums, music, lists, and a variety of other bells and whistles. My space has grown as they have. I'm thankful for all that they've automated to make their users look good. One can take advantage of these liberties they grant us and make a nice-looking, well-rounded site, as I've seen in so many Live Spaces out there.

But in some areas, it just wasn't enough. *Only comments from users with a Live ID or MSN Passport* *HTML is allowed, but many tags are not* *CSS styles are difficult to incorporate* It seems that while the box they gave us was fun and all, there was no room to venture outside the box. Perhaps that's for the best, though. When you look at sites that offer some way to attain quite a bit of freedom, like MySpace, you may end up with some nicely done spaces, but you also end up with loads more users that completely turn their Space into a digital eyesore. So I suppose the limits placed are for the greater good.

But I know how to design a website. I know how to write a style sheet to carry the design throughout the site. So I'm expanding my boundries. I've set up a website where the bulk of my blog-related activity will be carried out. Right now, I'm still in the design/set-up process with the blog software. While I will miss the convenience of Live Spaces, it will be nice to have full control over the design elements and everything else.

Is this the end of Don't Panic? No. Not for now. I hope to keep this going, if just to have a Live ID to comment with and all that. Hopefully I'll be able to automate the blogging part on this Space through an RSS feed. So there will be no goodbyes, this is not the end. I'll still be around, like usual, and if the whole thing goes in the crapper I'll be back in full force.