Ahhhhh, it's finally live. After what felt like the longest hiatus ever, my new website it here!
I know what you're thinking. Helene, is THIS your big news? No. You'll know it when it hits you, promise! But I do have a new blog. And it's on WordPress. Before you judge me for switching from Blogger to WordPress let me explain.
I love Blogger. I love WordPress. I love Squarespace. Personally, I don't think you can go wrong with either platform. Period. But that's a post for another day.
Let me tell you why I switched. There are mainly two reasons and they are a little silly. But here they are:
- I wanted to be able to move things around on my site, easily. I really liked the idea of having a main image and then being able to structure a post around the image. And I found this theme (it's called Capri) and fell in love.
- I wanted comments to be different. I love Disqus comments and I couldn't import them from Blogger. I also wanted the ability to easily change this.
So, I decided to switch.
I want to be clear: this wasn't easy. There were MANY times when I thought I should give up and go back to Blogger. I spent money on things that didn't work out. I was frustrated, a lot. So I want to tell you what worked, in case you ever want to switch.
If I was to EVER change something again, I would use WP Help. Being able to talk with someone brilliant was awesome. My RSS feed wasn't working. Or something didn't look right, he was there. Not just there, Guillermo answered my questions so quickly and really went out of his way to decipher the problem. I was in tears over the RSS (since that's what connects my blog o Bloglovin') and he not only fixed the problem but took it a step farther and showed me the solution.
Also, Fran was extremely helpful and reached out on Instagram to squash my fear and provide me with some guidance.
I went with SiteGround for hosting because I read multiple reviews of how great their customer service is. And it is! I probably talked with 457 times. But here's what I didn't realize… they don't work with you to manage the actual blog: design, RSS, etc. I wish I would have known this from the beginning. They really made me feel like I could do it all alone. Maybe some can. But when you have 1,400 posts and 45,000 comments and a bazillion images, it gets hairy quickly.
I know a lot of people use BlueHost, and I could be wrong, but I feel like many people use it because they pay out big affiliate fees. No judgement! But SiteGround is very very instructive. They WANT to help you through problems. At one point I was like it's okay I think I got this. And they were all, are you sureeeee? They will help you 24/7 with tech support, with virtually no wait time. It's basically why I switched. If I ever have a problem with Blogger there really isn't a live person to turn to.
I am so happy to finally post and tell you about the changes. But let me tell you, pretty much everything that could go wrong did:
- not all posts transferred over (missing about 1,000)
- not all comments transferred (at first I was at 0, now I'm just missing a few thousand)
- My RSS broke – this was the scariest to thing to me because RSS is basically Bloglovin– it's the reader for my blog, so if this didn't work people wouldn't be reading my blog.
- The design was a WRECK
- I was told to delete everything and start over
Because I love Sarah, who designed my original site, I kept many of the design elements she created the same. I scoured the internet on a design I liked and saw fellow blogger Margo, one of my all time favorites at The Overseas Escape and immediately fell in love with her design.
I want to reiterate just how insanely awesome WP Help was. This is not an affiliate link. I just cannot believe someone took time out of their day, night, even weekend to help. Customer service is everything. He basically put everything as is should be since I was a little clueless on how to use this theme.
So there you have it! Feel free to click around and tell me what you think. There are many new and updated pages.
Updated Pages:
Home Page – pretty much looks like a whole new world! There you will see all the main changes and new pages linked there as well. This is where the bulk of the work went into. Here's a preview:
Blogging Resources – Finally, all my blog posts in one spot.
Recs & Resources – Brand NEW page!
Hope you like it! Would love to know what you think. For real, the Home Page is where it's at!
