Jan 08 2008
New and Improved!
So here I am at my new home! It was a bit of a challenge, since there is a bit of a learning curve here, but I’m up for it. But I can’t lie to you. I am not the one who did the hard work. That credit must go to Snoskred, because she spent I don’t even know how many hours making my new place beautiful and taking care of pesky code issues. Everyone give Snoskred a round of applause!!!
Lisa left me a comment saying that she couldn’t see switching “just because” and wanted to know if there’s a good reason why. Everyone’s reasons for choosing a particular blog platform are different. The OpenID thing on Blogger is pretty much what did it for me, but for a long time I had been thinking about and dreaming about all the things I could do if I had a proper website. I also loved blogging, so I stayed where I was. I’ll be honest, Blogger does have some great features, and I was missing them a bit as I tried to set this up. But overall, for me, this is where I’ve been heading for a long time. I like how easy it is to set up multiple pages on here without an in-depth knowledge of web programming. And as I was in the middle of this, I read of a few blogs who said their traffic went up quite a bit once they went to self-hosted WP.
There is an option for those who want easy and free but not Blogger. WordPress.com is the free version of WP. It’s not as full-featured as WP, for example you can’t download plugins or have ads, but you can have separate pages and WP does make it super easy to import posts from your old blog on a number of different platforms. They also do have options where you can pay a small annual fee to have access to the CSS and other features if those sort of things are important to you. I played around on there quite awhile back and again more recently, and it really helped me get an idea of all the things I can do. Also, WP lets you create and publish a post in the future - not immediately with a future date, like I did with my Christmas Post, but I can actually change the time stamp and it will show up when the clock hits that time. That means I can write a whole bunch of new posts all at once when I have inspiration, then not worry about it for a while. That’s what the pros say they do, so it can definitely work for a little personal blogger like myself.
Since I have the ability to create all these lovely new pages, I do have a few ideas in mind. I am going to have a dedicated page for my blogroll so my front page will be a bit cleaner. I find it a bit easier to check out what other people are looking at when it’s all on a separate page, and I wanted to do the same here. Also, I’m going to be debuting a new weekly feature and will be making a page to showcase that. I’m still working on the New Feature so I’m not going to reveal it just yet, but it’s an idea that’s been kicking around for a long time now and only about a week ago did it turn from an abstract idea into a plan that I can visualize. I’m excited about it, and I hope you like it too.
Do you like my new header picture? I really loved the one Macoosh put together for me, but let me tell you something about the above pic - that is ME in that picture. ME! Boyfriend and I took a trip last May to San Francisco and drove down the Cabrillo Highway before we came home. That particular picture was taken at Pescadero Beach as I walked towards the water to touch the Pacific Ocean for the very first time in my life. It was kinda a big deal for an East Coast girl like myself. When I was looking for a new header pic for my new blog, I thought that would be the perfect one.
So sit back and enjoy the new place. Comments are appreciated as always, and don’t forget to subscribe to my feed and update your blogrolls with my new address. I’m off to tweak a bit more so I can make my blog everything I want it to be!
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7 Comments to “New and Improved!”
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I love getting comments, but due to the amount of spam I get, I have to moderate all comments.
Everything is looking great!
Snoskred did a great job for you! As for me…there were several reasons I was dissatisfied with blogger, but loved it for so many more. Thing was…the things that were ‘wrong’ for me weren’t options I wanted to live without. I was very happy with Wordpress.com, where I sat for about a week or two before getting my own domain.
Although…..I get less hits at my new domain. I plan on starting fresh, though, and eventually (hopefully) making the site bigger and better than it was on blogger!
Amy - thanks, I’m glad you like it!
DSB - Change is hard, but heck, already today it seems that I am getting more frequent comments. Your site is looking great, and I’m sure you’ll be able to regain the traffic you lost and more. I can’t wait to see what you do.
Very nice! And I love the photo.
Thanks Nancy!
Looks good! You’re going to love WordPress. I like it so much I moved two of my other non-blog sites over to using Wordpress as well. Sure makes it easier to edit pages.
Nobody, I am quickly growing to love it. In Blogger, I used to write my posts in html because I didn’t really like the way the visual editor worked, but here it’s so much more in depth. I just hope I don’t forget how to form a simple href tag!