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!

Welcome to my new blog!!! I only have a minute but I wanted to get it up. I must be getting to work right now but I will write a longer post later to formally welcome you and introduce you to my blog.

Really. You know I’ve been talking about switching to WordPress, right? Well, I’m not sitting here at the computer blowing smoke out my ass. I have a domain, and the lovely and amazing Snoskred is going to be an instrumental figure in making the change, so if you all ever get sick of me mentioning and linking to her, it’s because all the hard work she does is not going to go uncredited.

I won’t be posting as often in the near future as this changeover is in process, but once everything is up and running I have some great ideas that I can’t wait to implement. New features, new pages, and with the “Post at future date” feature that WP has, hopefully it will appear that I blog more often since I’ll be able to bang out a bunch of posts at once when the inspiration hits.

EEEEEEE! This is going to be the most fun I’ve had on my blog in a long time. I already know this will be well worth it!