I’ve been planning to post about my move to WordPress. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a month already since my move! (Yeah, I get a little sidetracked sometimes!)
Anyway, I wanted to post about it because (1) it is something that I’ve thought about doing for a long time and I’m really excited about it and (2) I know there are a lot of people that are curious about it (as I was for the longest time). In fact, I’ve already gotten a couple of emails inquiring about my move, so today I just want to take a few minutes to talk about that for anyone who may be interested in swapping themselves.
First off, I have to say that if you’re considering swapping at all, you should check out Blogging with Amy. She has a great series on Migrations, which includes everything you need to think about when deciding if you should migrate your blog and the various avenues to go about doing this. Her articles really helped me with the decision, and her suggestions made the process so much easier for me.
My Reasons to Swap: I swapped because I’ve started making money from my blog and would like to make more in the future. And everyone seems to say that WordPress is the platform for “professionals.” I had also heard so many people who were happy they had swapped and who only wished they had done it sooner.
And of course, now that I’ve moved I’m so happy about all the extra functionality and widgets available to me, not to mention a more professional presentation for me.
And another KEY component to my decision making process is the fact that nobody owns their Blogger blog. You could log on any day and your blog could be deleted. I can’t imagine waking up one day and all of work being deleted. That would have devastated me, so I knew I’d have to eventually move for that reason alone!
My Move: For my move, I followed Amy’s recommendations. I purchased hosting through Blue Host. They have a very easy process for installing WordPress. And upon purchasing your hosting you are given a temporary url so that you can take all the time you need building your site (designing the layout, sidebars, etc) before you actually move your blog over.
This is also a good option if you’re on a budget, because you can go ahead and buy your hosting, and then if you needed to wait a couple of weeks before buying your theme, hiring a designer, or paying for your migration, the temporary URL would allow you to take all the time you need.
From there, I did all the designing and layout installation myself. This took me about a week. I purchased the Pretty Young Thing Theme through StudioPress, and I customized the theme with my own graphics (By the way, my banner, background, and other elements were made using the My Year kit with special permissions from Meghan Mullens and Traci Reed).
From there, I also went about installing the content for my sidebars and pages, and basically doing A LOT of searching and reading of tutorials to learn how to customize everything exactly how I wanted.
And yes, there is a learning curve. Everything was a lot easier to do than I thought it would be, but if you’re going to do the install of everything yourself and you’re not familiar with WordPress and html at all, you will need to read some forums and tutorials to figure some things out. That being said, I found it pretty easy to find answers to my questions, and if you purchase a Genesis Theme, the purchase gives you access to their forums where you can ask questions about your theme and any customization issues you have.
Finally after I finished all of my customizing, I paid someone to do my migration. I suppose I could have attempted this myself, but having never done it before, I felt more comfortable paying someone! Joy Miller of Five Js Design did the migration for me. She is SUPER nice! She was happy to answer all the questions I had. She was ready to do the migration, basically as soon as I said, “go.” And she got everything done in a hurry. She also swapped over my RSS feeds. (I didn’t even have to make any changes for my automations through Facebook/Twitter/Feedblitz. Everything worked automatically as it always worked before.)
And to those who are wondering, Yes, your Google Friend Connect followers will come with you. They will just be counted on your RSS feed count.
Okay! Well, that’s basically the process I went through! If you’re thinking about swapping over to WordPress too, and you have any specific questions about, feel free to email me.
Also, I have to say that my move to WordPress (and my blog in general) couldn’t be possible without great bloggy friends and sponsors like these guys:
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate and sponsor links, and the opinions are my own.
Wow! I didn’t really know how much goes into running a blog. I can’t imagine that someone else could log on any day and your blog could be deleted. Thanks for all your hard work!