Hey everyone! I am SO excited to be blogging on a new blogging platform. I can’t even express how scared I was to have my whole blog transferred over to WordPress, but after a couple months of working things out it is finally done! I hope you like it! I know I love it. I especially like this girl…
Isn’t she cute? It me! OK, It’s doesn’t totally look like me. I do have blonde/brown hair and I swoop my bangs to the side and I always wear shirts with a big heart in the center! LOL My sister asked if the designer could make my waist a little wider…RUDE Huh? I thought so, but I wasn’t really offended because she has a point, not a lot of waists are that tiny and cute, but that’s ok! I like “me” and after having 5 kids I think I deserve an avatar of how I wish I looked! Katie and Forrest from Clarks Condensed and The Blog Help were a HUGE help in the transfer and the redesign! They basically did it all while I told them Yea or Nay! They are awesome and I am so excited and happy with the outcome.
I have had a few people asked my I was making the switch. Bloggers that still use blogger or free WordPress might be wondering why I transferred over. I thought I would share with you my main reason for making the change!
Why I Transferred from Blogger to WordPress
1. Blogger Scares Me! Let me explain. A few years ago I starting hearing about friends who totally lost their blog. One day they got on and Google, who owns your blog, had deleted their blog. Gone! It was lost and they didn’t get it back. Long story short – On Halloween night I got home and got on my blog. I logged in and my blog wasn’t there, sort of. Someone had hacked into my blog and posted scary Halloween picture in place of my other pictures. About 10 minutes later it was back to normal. I was so stressed out. I changed all my passwords and then emailed Katie a couple of days later!
2. SEO is way better on WordPress. SEO means “search engine optimization”. Basically saying search engines are better able to find my blog using WordPress because of different ways of doing SEO on WordPress. It’s something that I am learning, but am excited to figure out!
3. Why WordPress.org and not .com? WordPress.com is free, just like blogger. You don’t own your blog. With WordPress.org you have to pay a hosting company. I went with RFE and I have heard great things about them. Go Daddy still owns my domain name and I just pay a yearly fee for that! RFE is $7.99 a month which is totally worth it to know that if my site ever crashes they can back me up!
4- I feel like I will be able to monetize my blog better. When I first started blogging I never thought I would have a desire to make money blogging. That was crazy! There is nothing wrong with making money and blogging. I put a lot of time into my blog each week. I love what I do and I love to share it with people. I had to tell myself it was ok to earn money and blog. Now that my Url is an official website, not a bloodspot.com, I feel like companies that I work with will view me as more of a professional. Not that I’m super professional, I need all the help I can get. Which leads me to my last point.
5- I wanted to get it done before I went to my first blog conference. I am going to the Build Your Blog conference next month and based on things I have heard I already knew they would recommend WordPress as the best blogging platform, so I wanted to have that done so that I could go and focus on other things to learn at the conference!
I will still use blogger for my personal family blog. I transfer those pages over to Booksmart about every 4-6 months and print my books yearly so I don’t worry as much about that. Blogger is super easy and free, so if you are just starting out blogging for fun it is a great platform to go with! Just change your password every few months and know that you could loose your blog if you upset google at all, or if they just don’t like you!
If you have any questions or just want to say hello, and that you love my new blog leave me a comment or email me at thethingsilovemost{at}gmail.com 🙂 Have an awesome day, because honestly, 2015 is going to be a good one!
I LOVE your new design! I want to switch too! I’ve tried my best at figuring it out with no real luck. I’ve figured Blogger out for the most part with way too many long nights but feel stuck and want the freedom with WordPress. I’m going to contact your designers to switch. I went the wordpress.com route and it messed me up trying to change it over to the wordpress.org once I had my host so I put it on hold. Someday I hope to attend a blog conference too. So much to learn!
I made the switch back in August and am so happy I did; for many of the same reasons as you! Great post.
Congratulations, Kendra! I love the look of your new WordPress website. Linda
your blog looks great!
I love your new blog! 😀 Your avatar is GORGEOUS! 😀 As are you!!! BTW – what conference are you going to? I would love to go to a blogging conference (maybe it would inspire me to get good at blogging again! :o) 😀 TTFN! Corine 😀
I’m going to the Build your Blog Conference in Salt Lake next month! You should totally come!! That would be so so fun to see (meet) you in person!!!
I am making the switch from weebly to wordpress and it is so challenging. I use blogger for our family blog and will keep doing that, but I felt the same as you about my reading blog. I feel like I have so much to learn though! I’m glad to see someone else got through it. I love your blog and the look of it. I’m jealous you are going to the blogger conference too! I just can’t wing it this year, but I know I could learn so much!
I actually went last year. I’m not sure I can do it this year. It was a great conference, but I don’t think you need to go every year!
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