I feel like I am never ready for change. I get set in my ways, I get comfortable. You know the saying…if it ain’t broke then, I’m just gonna keep usin’ it. I’m a creature of habit. Not that I’m proud of that. The world isn’t changed by creatures of habit.
Sometimes, even though I’m a creature of habit, something happens and I decide it’s time for a change. Oh, I fight it for awhile and try to ignore the urge, but once the urge is there it just won’t go away.
Why am I telling you this? Because this week I decided to switch from Blogger to WordPress. Why? Honestly, I wanted to see what all the hype was about. I have nothing bad to say about Blogger. For the longest, I thought I would stay with Blogger forever, that we would grow old together. Blogger has been good to me and Blogger is FREE! They say you get what you pay for, but I got much more than nothing from Blogger.
Call me fickle, but WordPress caught my eye. I like the look of a WordPress blog. I had done as much as I could with the appearance of my old blog and I was itchin’ to try something new, to learn something new.
I am a blogger of limited means so while I considered paying someone else to do the move for me, it became apparent that my budget would only allow for a team of three non-specialists: me, myself, and I. Apparently, I’ll work for free.
I wanted to sit down and do it all at once, but as the mami of a toddler, I had to do it all in 20 minute increments throughout the course of a few days. I have to say that I was scared because I’ve heard horror stories of things getting lost in the transfer, but thanks to some wonderful online resources that made the steps Mami dummy-proof, I think I did okay.
My biggest fear was losing subscribers. Here’s where I need your help. If you are reading this in your reader or dashboard, could you pretty please pop over and let me know? I followed the instructions to transfer my feed and I’m just hoping that I did it right.
I just unpacked. The place still has new-blog smell all over it. (Don’t sniff your screen, weirdo!) I’m sure I will have some kinks to work out, but for better or worse, I’m here and I hope you will continue to visit.
If you are considering a similar move here is the link to the wonderful online instructions I followed:
- The New Ultimate Guide to Migrating from Blogger to WordPress: provides simple instructions that guide you from prep, to installation, to fixing broken links, and includes how to move your feed seamlessly. (I’ll need you to tell me if it worked.)
Anyway, let me know what you think of the new place. I know it looks a lot like the old place, but it didn’t when I unpacked it. I had to paint the place, rearrange the furniture and put up a new header. I’m beat! Thanks for stopping by.
P.S. If I’m not showing up in your reader or blogger dashboard, would you consider re-subscribing?
Looks AMAZING!!! I am so impressed you did this all on your own! Curious why you are still using the Disqus comments, though…
One thing you will find is that your feed will be “lost” to most of your followers for quite some time. I lost tons of followers – some had to resubscribe in order to “see” me again…
Otherwise, you look gorgeous mama!!!
I'm pretty sure I got the feed transfer down because I just checked and I showed up in my own reader (I subscribed before switching). Not so sure about the Google Friend Connect though :(. I'm not showing up in the Blogger dashboard. I guess there are bound to be some bumps along the way.
I kept Disqus 'cause I kinda like it. It sincs my comments with the wordpress commenting system, so if I ever decide to deactivate it, the comments are still in wordpress.
You show up in my Google Reader, but only in a truncated form – I only get a few lines of each post instead of the whole shebang. I like it in long form, but this may bring me over to comment a bit more often 🙂
I'm so proud of you for doing it with just those three helpers – you all did a great job!
Oh I hate truncated form! I'll have to see if I can fix that. Thanks for letting me know.
good you kept disqus – so I first noticed the new header – nice – then something didn't look right.
I linked over to your last post (safety thing) and remember writing this long comment (now I know why you didn't reply ) but it was gone. Only 8 or so comments were shown.
The good news is the link went to the right place. I clicked “home” and solved my puzzlement of what was going on here. good job on moving stuff.
This post does NOT show up in my blogroll just the previous safety one. I noticed that your blog updates have been slow to show up in my blogroll for sometime so it might not have anything to do with your move. Did you put your own blog in your blogroll? I have mine set-up that way and sometimes can wait 10's even 20's of minutes before I see the update.
When I switched the comments over it didn't import your comment. Supposedly, Disqus is coming up with some sort of tool that will fix that eventually. For now, a bunch of comments just aren't going to be displayed. Oh well…bumps in the road. Thanks for the feedback. Let me know if your blogroll ever updates me.
hmm only 8 or so comments now – I think there were 30 or more. Well old comments don't get much visibility except in your featured post.
Speaking of blogrolls – where did yours go to?
It's coming back. I just haven't gotten to it. This stuff takes up a lot of time. I'm still trying to get my feeds to work right.
You popped right up in my reader like always, except it did show 20 new posts and I was all, WHAH????
It looks beautiful!
http://jingleyanqiu.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/th…
important information is posted…
see you later.
take good care…
thank you for the comments and encouragement!
😉
very helpful hints and collective thoughts!
😉
You showed up on my blogroll without any blip. I guess I should also tell myself, never say never.
You did well Mami.
Congratulations on being brave enough to try something new. Your blog is always good wherever it is. I have a writer's type blog at and atWordress and I have an expat blog (expat being a person who doesn't live in their own country but I'm sure you knew that already) blog (no, make that two blogs, one with long and one with shorter posts) at Blogger. I love them all. Good luck with the change.
Love it…great job! You're working just fine on my reader. Can't get rid of me that easy! :o)
I can't believe you did it yourself. Unreal!!! I'm in awe of you.
Loooks great….I wondered why this morning there were like a hundred post from you…not that I mind, your post are always amazing,…but wow 😉
glad your move was easy
Up n running on my dashboard and blogroll. YAY
Now I understand why it looked like you had a manic blogging episode yesterday!
Thanks so much!! I am thinking of making the switch!!
Wow-you are amazing! I'm afraid of WordPress. I tried to set up one for work and it didn't like html and it kept talking about CSS-whatever that is. I just didn't find it as user-friendly for non-total-geeks. I haven't found any compelling reason to make the switch, so blogger is where I shall stay.
I have you in my google reader-though this post hasn't showed up yet, but your Google friend thing said we're not friends. I'm not going to take it personal…this time….
Oh, we're friends! That Google Friend Connect is just trying to cause problems.
I think Blogger is great and I really did think I would stay with them forever. The deciding factor for the move is that I own two other domains and if and when I decide to develop them, I don't want to do it on Blogger because they are not blogs. I do think that Blogger is by far easier and I'm so grateful that there are people that wrote instructions that I could understand. I do have to say that I learned A LOT and now that knowledge is all mine.
If you are thinking about it, really check out those links because they were the easiest, clearest instructions I could find.
You did a great job! I also think you will love WordPress, especially since you are running thesis also. There really is a lot you can do with the combination.
Great job on your move!
Welcome to wordpress, mami! I'm a .org girl myself (yeah I know, I'm one of those annoying geeky I-can-do-it-myself types) but .com is a great platform. Hope you like it here. 🙂
Thank you. I think I will like it. I'm glad that I decided to do it on my own because I learned a lot in the move. Also, I'm anal so I think if I would have had someone else do it, I would have driven them crazy.
You are showing up just perfect in my Blogger Dashboard.
Hip, hip. hurray! Thank you for letting me know.
Looks great! I subscribed.
Thank you!
I'm confused (though, it doesn't take much). I saw you in my blogger dashboard. Is it supposed to work that way when you are at wordpress and not blogger?? If so, how kind of blogger to let me know you left them 🙂
Yeah, I you can still see people that are not on Blogger in your dashboard depending on how you subscribed.
I'm easily confused too. One of my go to phrases is, “I'm confused and full of rage.”
I'm in the same thought train. I gotta get off blogger, but I've heard how hard to manage and post WP is. But I love it's clean, professional look.
I think your blog looks wonderful, and NEVER would've guessed it was blogger. You have so many features…
Wonderful, just wonderful 🙂 I love WP & Thesis. I did it on my own too & it's worth every step 🙂
I remember when you did it.
The move went smoother than I expected and I learned a lot in the process. I liked Blogger, but I had to do so many tweaks to make it look the way I wanted and I was ready to try something new.
I use the RSS feed and you showed up just fine!!! I just moved to wordpress in the spring and I love it!!
I have not seem you on my dash. I was just thinking that I had not visited in a while! No wonder!! I will subscribe again.
Thank you!
I'm envious, but still very, very afraid. The only way I will do this is if a) I can keep both running at once for a while and b) If I can get some help IRL, I think. I feel very techno-competent, but this scares the crap out of me! What happened to Georgie last week really freaked me out, though. Still, on the fence.
You, yours, and yourself did a really great job! Whenever change occurs, there will be tweaks to be done. I came through your comment so haven't checked my blog roll. Blogger did let me know where to find you!
You can keep both running for awhile. I chose to just redirect everything right away, but you don't have to.
You showed up in my reader perfectly and your new site looks awesome! I'm so impressed by you but then again, that is NOTHING new!
🙂
You showed up in my reader perfectly and your new site looks awesome! I'm so impressed by you but then again, that is NOTHING new!
🙂
Soooo what are you thinking of Word Press? I haven't done anything myself… and I sorta wonder what I would gain or lose by moving. Annnnnnnd then I just don't like change 😉 I'm with ya on that if it ain't broken theory. I think you did a great job getting everything over though!
I've subscribed both – email and feed. Sometimes I'm too busy to read reader, email reminder works better for me!
I'm changing to WP soon. I don't have time nor interest to 'fight' with the change so one guy is doing it for me…
What have you noticed to work better in WP vs. Blogger?
See you on SIMC Sunday again! 🙂
Oh wow – welcome to The Light! 😀 I'll let you into a little secret – I find many Blogger sites clunky and they can be riddled with weird foibles. Curiously enough, when I started blogging I tried out WordPress, Typepad and Blogger and found WordPress to be far more intuitive than the other two! I suppose it just depends how our brains work – just as some people are all for Macs and some for PCs.
While we're talking blog sites and semi technical stuff can I also make another admission? Disqus causes me endless problems – I almost always have difficulty signing in, followed by several rounds of refreshing the page before it will let me type anything in the comments box. I love the WordPress efficiency at catching spam and the ability to leave a comment at other WordPress sites without any fuss – no word verification or signing in.
Oh, and that weird sound track I mentioned? I'm afraid it seems to have followed you over here. It's a man huffing and puffing and talking about having difficulty getting it in, admitting that maybe he's just tired. (See what I mean about it being vaguely smutty)?! I don't know if that rings a bell on something you've advertised in the past or had linked in the side column. Maybe some old code remains somewhere on your front page??
Oh dear, this sounds like a list of complaints but I figure you'd rather know if stuff is difficult/peculiar. You and your 'technical team' have done well in transferring over here. It all looks great and I'm sure you'll love it here.
Alright, I got rid of Disqus. Too many people complaining and I’m a sucker for comments. I just wish that this commenting system would automatically send responses in email to the person commenting so that they don’t have to come back to see replies. Perhaps that will happen soon.
As far as the man huffing and puffing, he is installing a car seat. It is the JuiceBoxJungle Widget on the top of the page. You can turn off the audio and it should stay off from then on. It does not play the audio when I visit my own page so I wasn’t aware that it was playing.
Right now, I'm still getting used to WordPress and where everything is in the dashboard. I do like the flexibility of setting up my template/theme on WordPress over Blogger better. I was so used to the Blogger editor that right now I'm missing it a little bit. I'm also not clear on how to use “tags” because Blogger didn't use them. I'm learning.
The support forums on WordPress are great. It's pretty easy to find an answer to anything.
If I would have had the money, I would have gladly paid for someone to do the move for me. It was time consuming and I had to recheck everything because I was so afraid of making a mistake.
I just hope everyone “finds” me.
Right now I'm still getting used to everything. I like it so far. I wish I would have done it sooner only because I am afraid that I may lose followers in the move.
Yay! Thank you for letting me know. I'm showing up just fine with some people, but a few haven't been able to see me.
looks great!!!I, too resist change at first! Way to go Mami!!! Yeay U!
Thank goodness when I tried to read your blog, I was redirected or otherwise I would never have found you. I'm not a blogger, just a reader of all your personal great blogs.
I’m glad you found me!
I have been thinking about doing the same thing over these last few weeks. Thank you for the links–i’ll check them out!
I only have you in my feed until your last post, so i’ll run to resubscribe!
If you decide to do the move, feel free to pick my brain.
Just wanted to let you know that the blog is currently not showing up in my list of blogs on my dashboard. I went ahead and signed up with Networked Blogs so I can follow through Facebook for now. I would assume that if you followed the steps, it should show up in a couple of weeks. I’d miss you though, so I’m glad I can follow through Networked Blogs.
Can you recall how you got your Networked Blogs widget transferred? Also, did you have any trouble with transferring your Google Friends Connect widget? Because when I get the HTML code and transfer it over to WordPress using the text widget, WordPress seems to remove the javascript portions of the code, and I end up with just a bunch of code on my page. Thanks!
Oh, and another thing: Did you use wordpress.org or wordpress.com?
And I'm sorry I'm so remedial at even POSTING COMMENTS. Geez. I should have mentioned that it's Jenny from the Momplex. 🙂
Sorry, I took so long to reply. I chose to do wordpress.org. I figured if I was going to go through the effort of switching I might as well be self-hosted.
Ok, you havent showed up in my blog roll for ages, but I just joined the friend connect…hopefully that fixxes it .