Otherwise entitled, the day I lost my mind.
I recently moved from Blogger to Wordpress. Moving to Wordpress from Blogger is something I did for a few reasons:
- I don’t like that Google owned my blog, and could take it down whenever it wanted for whatever reason it deemed good. Plus, when Google reader left the party… it made me nervous!
- I get almost NO SEO hits (hits from search engines) and I had read that can happen when you’re on blogger, it is easier for sites to see you when you’re on your self-hosted site.
- It just seemed like if I wanted my site to grow, that’s what I should do. I read a LOT of books. I almost took the step 3 other times… it was time to jump.
And, jump I did. so, how did I do it?
{this post contains affiliate links -- feel free to see my disclosure).
I used a woman I met online {wink, wink, nudge, nudge} to help me make the transfer. Her name is Katie Clark and she is great to work with. She charges (at the time that I did it) 75 dollars to migrate your site over to a self-hosted site, and that includes a wordpress template. The wordpress template alone is similar in price to that.
She, and others I knew, recommended RFE hosting. It sounds like they have good service and sites just don’t go down. Which, is important. During May, I saw a few 7,000 days. That’s a lot of traffic, that I don’t want to miss. it is 14 dollars/month through them, and I do have the option to increase my level if I need to (and, sadly, I do hope to need to increase it).
The main game changer was realizing I would just have an initial 75 dollar cost to Katie, and then just the 14/month until we grow (at which point my income will grow as well). Moving to Wordpress wasn’t as expensive as I thought it was going to be.
On Friday, Katie made a fake site, and transferred my files over. I then obsessed over it for 2 days. I probably worked 30 hours or so, trying to get it to look like I wanted. I can talk more about that part — but I will say that on Saturday I think I almost put myself into a diabetic coma. There was a point that I thought I was going to die. I didn’t… .but my thought was {mind you, I’m thinking I’m dying} “but no one will ever see that blog.” Uh huh… obsessive.
By Saturday night she migrated it to the new site.
I’m not going to lie. This has been a H-A-R-D process. I am VERY used to blogger code, and I am learning a whole new language with Wordpress. There is a steep learning curve, but I am doing it. Issues I’ve had so far:
- My ads, it’s hard to figure out where they should go and how they should work, and with a responsive theme (that means my blog looks different depending on your screen size) it makes it more complicated.
- That menu up top took, I don’t know, like 9 million years to make. Each button is a separate photoshop file. I-yi-yi, I do love how it looks though.
- Margins. I have an annoying habit of needing things to look perfect and I will mess with margins until they do. Of course, that messes something else up…. are you getting the picture?
- At one point I missed something in a php file and Katie had to paste in a code to fix it. She saved my bacon.
- My email left my go daddy domain, and I went a week without knowing I was missing email {gasp}.
- Sometimes I sit in my computer chair so long my feet swell.
Am I happy I made the switch? Frankly, I’m not sure at this point. It has been a HARD row to hoe. I do feel like I have a LOT more control now, though. I do believe me SEO is going to go up (search engines will be able to find me) and that is exciting. I have been so busy working on my site, I haven’t been pinning as well this week, and my stats actually have gone down. {sigh}
I need to find the balance. I need to go back to my hour a day of working on the blog through the summer. I am hoping to carve out more time then that in the fall, but for now I NEED a balance. Always working on it. right?
Have you thought of changing to Wordpress, or HAVE you changed to wordpress — tell me about it below!
If you enjoyed this post be sure to check out my other blog income posts, or my blog income spreadsheet. You’ll see how far I came since January. 🙂 Also be sure to follow my “Business of Blogging” Pinterest board.
Melissa says
Have you written an article about advertising on wordpress? I don’t expect to make money but I’d like to start down this path just so I can learn how to do it and be familiar with it. I’ll be watching for more posts on this 🙂 Also, I think I remember you posting about the books you read?
Hilary says
Melissa, there is no reason not to put up wordpress. I use the google publisher plugin (40% sure that’s the name), and it makes it SUPER easy to plop ads where you think you’d like them, or adjust them at will (I use blogher for my top ads, and they are not as simple — they are a good network though, maybe apply now — you might be accepted by the time you’re ready!) Yes, I did read a great book. You can read about it in my post about blogging income.
Sarah says
I made the switch about a week ago from wordpress.com to becoming self hosted and did it on my own although I didn’t have much to worry about I don’t have a lot of traffic or ads. Let me just say it was stressful for me I can’t imagine being at your level! I had been averaging 150ish views a day and I had like 3 days with 10 views per day, my blog was a mess and it drove me crazy! I feel your pain!! I am so glad I made the switch and that is behind me! I hope you end up loving it.
Hilary says
Sarah, it is SO. MUCH. FUN. right? I will say that yesterday was my STRONGEST day yet. I got over 9k views. I was thrilled, so maybe it WILL be a good thing after all! Who did you use for a server?
Sarah says
9k! That is exciting. You are doing something right! I had my biggest day yet after switching, but mine was 608 views… I’ll take that growth!
I went with DreamHost, it was recommended on wordpress.org and I was able to prepay for 2 years and get a pretty good rate. I didn’t do to much research before hand so I hope it works for me 🙂
Hilary says
Sarah, 600 — that’s like 5-6 times your usual, right? That’s wonderful!
I bet you’ll be booming in no time!
Yasmina - Mina and Her Blog says
Haha love your reaction! I took the jump as well in december 2013 after getting frustrated with not able do much with blogger. (it’s just plain basic) I jumped and did all the transfer myself (pretty proud of myself haha) and immediately after logging in there I thought I made the biggest mistake of my life. It looked so difficult/different and overwhelming. To buckle up and get dirty and work on it is really hard. It’s time consuming and pretty much stressful , many times I wanted give up and many times I felt like I was this close to finally crack that design I was after.
Wow! did I wrote too much?
Anyways, my point is I can understand you’re not sure whether your happy you made the switch, but you will be soon! trust me 😉
xo Yasmina
p.s; congratz making the switch!
Hilary says
Oh snap, when I saw this comment last night I was locked out of wordpress and my cpanel for entering my password wrong too many times. I was seeing question marks where all my pictures were and my host wasn’t responding. Yes, I hope I’m glad soon. 🙂
Yasmina says
Oh gosh! I hope so too !
Cyn says
Thanks for this info, I’ve been agonizing about going to WordPress myself from Blogger.
I have one problem with your site–the grey text is very hard to read. Simple black would be way better.
Hilary says
Good info on the font! I’ll have to try to get it a bit darker {which, btw — is WAY more painful on Wordpress than on blogger}.
Cyn says
You did it! I can see everything so much better! Good job!
Hilary says
Oh good! i’m so glad!
MiraSt says
A little time back I felt limited with Blogger’s possibilities and have chosen WordPress as a platform for my further blogging. For those who are really serious about blogging – WordPress is an optimal solution I guess.
Sorry that your migration experience turned out to be so challenging and hard to you. I made use of online converter (cms2cms) and had all my Blogger contebt imported to new WordPress quite fast and seamless.
Hilary says
It wasn’t the migration, it was probably more building the site and learning the new code. I’m still not sure it was the best move. 🙂
Jo Smith says
I love Wordpress and it’s advantages. I wouldn’t switch to Blogger immediately because I just started my blog a couple weeks ago. The Basic Plain is free. I follow you on Pinterest. I like your story!
Hilary says
Yeah, wordpress.org isn’t bad at all. When you’re ready, I’d switch to bluehost and get your own domain name as you can’t put any ads on wordpress.org blogs. 🙂
blogengage says
I’m glad the change went over well for you, I personally love WordPress and it’s all I know. Change can be hard, difficult I think you made the best possible change. You will also soon love all the rich features WordPress has to offer!
Hilary Erickson says
I do!