Blogging

We’ve made our move to Word­Press! Yay!

I wont lie, it was not easy and it took days of work. I stayed up many nights try­ing to fix every­thing up every­time I’d “break” some­thing. Blog­ger is hon­estly a lot eas­ier. I wish that I would have started out on Word­Press though as  every­thing would have been a lot eas­ier if I didnt have to migrate !

I could not have made this change with­out the help of Sharon from Good, True and Beau­ti­ful. She did the dirty work for me by mov­ing my sub­scribers, set­ting up a test blog for me before I went live, fix­ing up perma­links, and she was there answer­ing every sin­gle ques­tion I had with her  24 hour support(although that is not included in the pack­age. I learned that if you send a lot of emails you will get late night replies too… just kid­ding!)!
Thank you Sharon for help­ing me through this change.

Here are a few of the changes:

• Menu bar — I have added a menu bar above. I hope that it will make it eas­ier for you to nav­i­gate and for you to find the cat­e­gories that inter­est you.

• Mobile ver­sion — I have added a mobile ver­sion of this site. If you would like to check out my blog from your cell phone you wont have to use a lot of your data bun­dle to load every­thing. The site will also load much faster. If you do decide that you don’t like the mobile ver­sion there is a link on the bot­tom of the page where you can change to the full site version.

• Com­mentLuv plu­gin — Yay, I am so excited about this one. Every time you leave a com­ment you will also be able to leave a link to your lat­est blog post. Think of this as a way for me to say Thank You for your comment.
• Many new plu­g­ins - That will hope­fully enhance your visit.

For those of you who would like to migrate from Blog­ger to self hosted Word­Press here are a few tips:

• Get some­one to migrate your fol­low­ers, sub­scribers and perma­links for you. Many peo­ple do this for free if you pur­chase host­ing using one of their affil­i­ate links.
• Save a copy of your custom_functions.php, layout.css, custom.css file on your computer(from your FTP client) just in case you make a mis­take. When you get the Parse line error after try­ing to be smart and edit­ing your customs_function.php file instead of pulling your hair out and get­ting frus­trated you can just upload the file you started off with and every­thing will become nor­mal again. (I wish some­one would have told me that!)
• I use File Zilla as my ftp manager.
• Get Fire­Bug — Its a Must! I really do not know what that is yet… but EVERY sin­gle per­son I spoke to said, “Get Fire­bug”. ummm ok… I’ve got it.
• Watch this video on how to use fire­bug. (I haven’t had time to watch it yet).
• Be pre­pared to spend a lot of time try­ing to fig­ure every­thing out.
• I use the The­sis Theme for Word­Press and I am very happy with it. I love the design lay­out and how easy it is to customize.
• If you are going to try doing the move your­self then I rec­om­mend host­ing from  Dreamhost. If you sign up with dreamhost using my affil­i­ate link you can get 30% off any of their host­ing plans. (Dream host Dis­count code is “funwithmama”).
• Dou­ble check your final layout/template in Inter­net explorer as well as other browsers(Whatever you have). My site was load­ing really oddly in Inter­net Explorer. Sharon helped me sort that out by deac­ti­vat­ing all my plug ins in order to find out which plug-in was caus­ing the problem.
• After you buy your domain and change your name servers to point to your host­ing com­pany do not be alarmed if the changes take a while. It took my domain a few hours to load my Word­Press site on to the domain. It took over a day for it to load on Sharon’s. Patience is the key.
• Use the Word­Press forum or if you are using The­sis then try the The­sis forums for help. There are some amaz­ingly help­ful peo­ple out there.

Blog­ger Vs. WordPress:

• It is very easy to set up a Blog­ger blog. (+1 Blogger)
• Once a Word­Press blog is all set up it is so much more fun and excit­ing for the blog owner.(+1 WordPress)
• Word­Press Plug Ins are so much fun to use! (+2 WordPress)
• Design­ing a Blog­ger site is eas­ier through the design options screen and the easy ‘add a gad­get’ box. (+1 Blogger)
• Mak­ing a new post is sim­i­lar in Blog­ger and Word­Press. (+0 Blog­ger and WordPress)
• There is no PREVIEW but­ton in Word­Press. I really miss that about Blog­ger. Once you change your cod­ing you have to save it in order to see if it works or not. (+1 Blogger)
• When you make a mis­take with your cod­ing you get errors. You can­not always sort that out by eras­ing the changes you made. You will have to fix that by going into FileZilla and upload­ing your old file(in my case custom_functions.php file).
• With Blog­ger when you add incor­rect html it will not allow you to save it or pub­lish it. (+1 Blogger)
• Word­Press blogs look much more clean and organ­ised. P blogs are more reader friendly.(+1 WordPress)

Which one is bet­ter? It really is per­sonal pref­er­ence. For me? I am LOVING WordPress!

What do you think of our new design? Do you find it eas­ier to nav­i­gate? Leave a com­ment for some link love!

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