If you have been around my blog in the last few days you will notice that there have been some great changes, or now you are noticing that there are some changes. Yes folks, I made the switch from blogger to WordPress. I had a few reasons for the switch and I am going to share them with you and some of the challenges I faced while switching.
I want to start by saying that I am not delusional to believe that I have a huge blog and that is why I switched. Actually it was somewhat the opposite. I knew my blog was small enough that if I switched it wouldn't be terribly detrimental if I lost a few readers from GFC. The more people I had reading in Google the harder it would have been for me to switch.
But that does not answer the real question of why I switched so let me break it down for ya.
I like the way WordPress looks
I think it looks cleaner than Blogger. I know that you can get some bomb designers in Blogger, but I have been waiting for a whole semester for my new design. In WordPress I can choose my own templates and design for myself, for the most part. I actually still want someone to make a new header that is sparkly.
I own my own content
I am not sure if it is the future published author in me or the only child in me but it was super important that I owned my own content. In case you did not know if you have a Blogger blog Google owns the content you post. In WordPress everything is self hosted and you own your content. I am also getting a nice camera for Christmas and I want my photos to be my own. I am really happy about this.
If I do not like something I can change it with a new plugin
I wanted to add icons so you can follow my twitter and instagram pages. I played around with some plugins and found one I like for now. I am sure I will find another one I like more.
Anything you are having trouble with someone else had trouble with
WordPress actually does not have employees to provide support if you need help. Instead there are forums that you can read on every single topic to help you out. It is a little time-consuming to find what you need, but so is contacting customer service for any website. The best part is you learn how to fix it yourself and get even better at computers.
For example, I wanted the comments to appear at the bottom of a post instead of at the top. The template I am using has them at the top. I googled how to move the comments for my theme to the bottom and found the forum on the same topic. I got the html code, slapped it in and bam problem solved.
Even though it is great to learn more about your website this leads me to the few drawbacks I have encountered.
[caption id="attachment_260" align="aligncenter" width="576"]
A photo of Penny and I from my new phone. Something to make you happy before I get into the negatives.[/caption]You have to know what you are doing
Really though, I have spent a ton of time just trying to figure out what the heck I am doing. I went to bed last night with a huge headache from looking at my screen and figuring things out for so long. Penny has been such a bad girl too because I have been on the computer way longer than she thinks appropriate. She will usually give me an hour to do my work and then it is play time.
Your Bloglovin feed gets messed up
This is an easy fix. You email the customer support and they fix it in a day or so. Make sure you get a new button just in case your website changed, you want to make sure your readers get to the right spot.
Comments.
One of the things I liked most about blogger was the comment system. If someone graced my blog with a comment I was notified in my Gmail inbox and I could respond by composing an email back. It was simple, easy, and effective. WordPress is not this way. If you leave a comment on a WP site you only know if someone wrote you back if you subscribe to their comment feed. This means you get all the comments that people leave on the post, not just the author's reply. ANNOYING!
My solution was to add Disqus to my site. I choose this because I know a lot of bloggers use it already and it is pretty easy to use. I mostly just wanted a way to write people back so they knew I valued them and the time they spent to write me a comment.
Redirecting your links
This one is huge. Yes it is easy to import your Blogger blog to WP. If you want to know how I will help you. The part that is hard is adding the redirect html to your Blogger and WP accounts. You want to make sure to do this so if there are any links out there that have a url to your Blogger blog they will come to WordPress no problem.
I found the following article and video to be the most helpful in this process.
If you ever are thinking about making the switch I am more than happy to try to share what I have learned with you. I am in no way an expert and I have just done the minimum to make sure my blog looks nice and is functional. I know I have a ton to learn, but I am looking forward to the challenge. I am pretty sure if there was a job of being a professional student I would do that in a heart beat!
In other news it was decided yesterday that I am hosting Christmas dinner for my family this year. They are all over it and no one wanted to. I offered with the condition that there will be a lot of love and joy and mediocre food.
I am in luck because my grandma orders food on QVC for Christmas. Yes, you can order food on QVC, my grandma doesn't like to leave the house. I just need a main course. I do not want to make a turkey, but want something with turnkey in it. All you awesome people out there should leave a link for a great recipe that I can make!
I hope you have a great day and get your errands done early so as to avoid all the crazies!
loving the new look!!
ReplyDeleteThanks! It is fun to mix things up!
ReplyDeleteIt looks great! Very clean and fresh.
ReplyDeleteI love the snow. Very cool.
ReplyDeleteSo funny that your grandma already has the meal ordered from QVC
Thank you Rachel! I love that most WP sites just look cleaner. Merry Christmas to you!
ReplyDeleteThanks Brittany! I think the snow if funny, considering the title has sunshine in it, but whatever, it is festive and I like it.
ReplyDeleteMy Gma is the best/strangest! Thanks QVC!
Merry Christmas to you!
Congrats on your move! I also made the move in the beginning of the month.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that gave me headache the most was when I was moving/redirecting my Disqus threads on the old blogger to the Disqus plugin on Wordpress because some of them weren't transferred! I followed the steps on the website but I still have some comments that aren't transferred until now, but I guess I'll just leave them like that for now. I think there's a plugin called Reply Me that's similar to blogger comment system but I heard it hasn't been updated for more than two years so it might have security issues...
You're so right about if you're having problems someone else might have had them as well! I think it's also because Wordpress users include those high-skilled developers so they know how to fix things!
That is finny that you mention that about Disqus because the same thing happened to me. I am glad I am not alone. All my comments transferred over and hen did not show up with disqus. At least this works as a way to email people back when they comment! Hope you are liking the switch!
ReplyDeleteIts been years since I did the blogging platform switch (from blogger to moveable type to wordpress) and its not fun! But you're right, the more you tinker around to figure out how to do something in WP, the better your skills become :) Although, I may be a lousy blogger in that I almost never reply back in the comments section; I just reply directly to the reader via email!
ReplyDeleteWhich template/design did you go with?
I was too lazy to do the reply with the email address! I thought It would be too hard for me to remember :) I am using Vortex right now. Looking forward to getting more into blog design this new year! Happy New Year to you!
ReplyDelete[…] Instead I am just going to tell you to start with Blogger. It is free, it is easy to use, you can reply to comments through email (that is huge when you are first starting out), it comes with a little community already with other Blogger bloggers, and it is easy to export if you ever want to move to self hosted like WordPress.org. Give that some time though. If you are not going to stick with blogging do not dish out the money to move to a self hosted blog. You can read my views on that topic here. […]
ReplyDelete