Thanks to all of the organizers of Armchair BEA - what a tremendous job they've done! I've added some new blogs to my reader (as if I could keep up with it as it was). For you non-bloggers, starting Sunday I'll return to normal programming but for this last day of Armchair BEA it's our chance to ask the experts or offer tips. Even though I've been blogging for over three years now, I certainly don't consider myself an expert. I still have so much I want to learn about working with the blog itself. So I'm going to take this opportunity to ask a question:
I've been toying with the idea of moving to WordPress. Realistically how hard is that to do with limited HTML knowledge and is it worth it? I have a fear I could end up spending the entire summer trying to do this and then find myself just dealing with new problems instead of making my life easier.
I would only advise moving to WordPress if you're going to be self-hosting. Free WP isn't going to be worth the move, but self-hosted WP has nearly limitless possibilities. But for that, you really need a web developer who knows what they're doing. I honestly had no idea how to do anything when I moved to self-hosting. Luckily, I'm married to a developer, so he took care of it for me, but it would have been chaos if I tried to do it myself.
ReplyDeleteThe only big drawback for you is you'll lose your GFC followers, since you can't use GFC on WP. So if you're going to move, you need to figure out what your follow options are going to be, and maybe implement an alternative method now that you can bring to your new site.
Good question, and I'm sorry I'm not more help! Here's my Ask the Experts post!
Hi Lisa! I really like Wordpress. The design is better, and I like the commenting system. Wordpress.com is what I'm at now and I enjoy it. It's definitely different and it'll take a little bit of time to get used to the different layout, but I don't think it was any harder for me to figure out than Blogger was at first, lol. (If you switch to Wordpress.org then you would be self-hosting, and from what I gather that requires more money and work.)
ReplyDeleteI recommend going over to Wordpress.com and creating a blog there just to see what it's like and play around with it. (It's free, after all, unless you buy your domain name AKA url.)If you like it, you can import everything from this blog into it and make the switch complete! If you don't like it, you can delete it and forget all about it without your readers ever knowing. I originally tried Wordpress by making a blog for only tv & movie reviews (which I've since abandoned) and it helped me decide to switch my book blog over for good.
Hope that helps!! :-)
It's funny.... I like the look of wordpress too but did you see the armchair graph that 60%+ use blogger and only 25% wordpress? something like that...
ReplyDeleteI use a free template I found online, super clean/crisp. They are super easy, I have a test blog that let's me set everything up and when I'm ready for the reveal I can copy/paste into my live blog.
Have a great weekend! The WT comes home late tonight... woohoo.
I'm on wordpress and I find it easy to use and doesn't seem to have technical problems like blogger does. I just use the basic free version but there are lots of preset formats so it's easy if, like me you don't know anything about html.
ReplyDeleteOne of the bloggers I follow regularly just moved to WP and she said it was a headache. Her thousands of comments were lost, until a fellow, savvy blogger got it back for her. However, she still has not recovered many of her images. She is also getting a lot of spam messages. Here's her post about it:http://theunreadreader.com/2012/05/reading-rewind-may-2012.html
ReplyDeleteLisa, I have my history blog on Wordpress, but really, Blogger is so much easier. Blogger lets us be more diverse with backgrounds, etc. I agree with Stephanie D. It would probably end up being a big headache, especially (as Lauren said above) if you're not going to self host. Just my humble advice! I have 11 Blogger blogs and I'm actually pretty happy with it.
ReplyDeleteI found your email subscribe form. Yay!
I think I agree with what others have said -- it makes the most sense to move to Wordpress if you're going to go to self-hosted. WP self-hosted is amazing, and I love it, but I do have a little bit of background in website development. WP.com and Blogger are pretty similar, from what I can tell. But WP does have a lot of good documentation explaining how to move to their service, if that's what you want to do.
ReplyDeleteMoving to self-hosting Wordpress is definitely worth it!! You have full control and completely own your content. The possibilities are endless. Sure there is a learning curve and the actual transfer part can be a bit tricky. But in the end you are the keeper of your own domain and you have control, no more being subjected to the whims of Google/Blogger.
ReplyDeleteI moved to WP from Blogger and I love it. I use the free version but purchased my own domain. I found it all very easy to transfer over. I created the account, built it out and then just imported the posts and comments into it. It took a weekend and I probably spent about 5 hours total on it.
ReplyDeleteI find it to be much more stable than blogger which I still use for the PTA site I maintain.