Having just shed blood, sweat and tears getting my blog migrated to this shiny, happy new WordPress 3.0 compliant theme, I have just one wish. That I could step into a time machine and go back a few years to my Newbie Blogging Self and dispense some hard-earned blogging lessons. Because it seems to me, everything that caused me pain and suffering during this process could have been avoided if someone had just warned me of a few pitfalls to avoid. But none of you did, did you? Never mind. I’m still going to pay it forward and tell you what I’ve learned.
1. Decide up front if you are committed to this. Then make a commitment to a platform.
I know everyone loves Blogger, because it’s easy and it’s free. I started on Blogger, too, a couple of years ago. But it will never take you where you want your blog to go, if you really want it to go somewhere. Or even if you just want to keep doing this for awhile. I remember the tears as I finally migrated off Blogger to a dedicated WordPress site. In any migration, you lose shit. As well as losing your shit. Start as you mean to go on. Take Away Lesson: If you think you want to blog — even just for a few years — start on the platform you think will keep working for you. If you want cheap and free, WordPress.com has free hosting as well.
2. Think long and hard about the way you want your blog formatted. Going from a three-column format to a two-column format? Not so easy. My CyberDesktop is now littered with plug-ins that can’t fit my new format. Luckily, my new template has so much built in, that nothing essential was lost. But trying to migrate from my original format to this one was not a pretty sight. I ended up rejecting a lot of possible templates that wouldn’t let me shoehorn in all my content.
3. Invest in the best template you can get. There’s a reason free templates are free: they aren’t very feature rich and they don’t really take full advantage of the platform — especially a platform like WordPress. That’s why we all keep sticking on those plug-ins. Then we start having plug-in conflicts. Moving to this new template from my old free one has been like stepping up from a Yugo to a Ferrari. I’ve got so many options and so much horsepower under the hood, I just don’t know what to do with my blogging bad self. You don’t have to spend a lot. There are some great templates for $20 to $70.
4. DO NOT BUY A TEMPLATE FROM A PLACE WITHOUT A FORUM AND SUPPORT! This is critical. You will need it. And it’s worth whatever it costs you to buy the template. I’ve had a million questions and I’ve found most of the answers at the Elegant Themes forum. And I highly recommend their themes as well.
That’s it. That’s all I know after two years at this. Except for these extra credit helpful hints:
- Carry a small notebook everywhere to jot down ideas.
- If you have a great post idea, write that post as soon as you can, even just as a draft. If you let it sit too long, you’ll probably lose it.
- Try to learn just a bit of HTML so you have some idea what’s happening under the hood.
And, as Joe Dirt says: Keep on keepin’ on. (But without the mullet!)
Don’t know Joe? Check him out. Think Dumb and Dumber. With mullets.
I can’t bring myself to do what it takes to blog at the next level. Too much of my life and work is about “taking things to the next level.” I am staying in kindergarten and will admire the seniors in high school from afar.
For me, finger paints. And that means blogger.
But I certainly appreciate the oils.
Actually, I don’t find Blogger “easier”. You have to jerry rig it so much with plugins to make it do what you want, it’s easier in the long run to get a full featured XHTML & CSS compliant template to start with.
It’s a dandy template, and if I ever get sick of mine, I’ll be sure to give your supplier a look-see.
Then again, the Dictionary of Idioms illustrates “stick in the mud” with a picture of me. It’s an old picture, but still…
Lisa, if I never compliment you on anything else – I have to say you have good taste. I can surely understand how Blogger would restrict how you want your blog to look and work.
I really like how “clean” everything looks here. You’ve done a fine job. I, OTOH, will stick with Blogger because I have the heart of an engineer rather than a poet – it works, it ain’t broke, it don’t need fixin.’
Just getting some posts into draft is good advice – I’ve certainly lost more than a few because I let them go and the idea seemed too stale to pursue later.
Aw Jeffro,
You’re just saying that because I like Joe Dirt — surely David Spade’s Oscar-worthy performance!
Actually, I left Blogger because it did seem “broke”. The number of plug-ins it took to get anywhere near what I wanted for looks and functionality…
But what works for you, works for you.
I love your new look!! Great advice here as usual. I was one of the few who started with blogger; went to wordpress.com; went to self-hosted wordpress; hosed it up – went back to blogger; went to self-hosted wordpress.
4 months of posts were lost between all of these transitions but as regular readers of my blog know, it was not a big loss 😉
None of these transitions are easy. I’m still futzing around with annoying little problems here and there. And all I did was change the look, not the platform.
I’m putting up with Blogger because I’m scared to try changing over. But someday….
I wish I knew these things when I first started blogging. My transition from Blogger to WordPress wasn’t painful. I just wish I had done it sooner.
Lisa,
I would have preferred to send this in an email, but since you want us to talk to the blog….
I’m trying mightily to like your new layout. I certainly appreciate how much time and effort you must have spent on it (and it’s probably easier technically). But sometimes newer isn’t better; I must be an old fuddy duddy. The other seemed more readable in many ways (maybe it’s so much gray space in the new one?). The lines seem slightly longer now and I found my eye getting lost occasionally (hey I’m a boomer with the attendant symptoms). No doubt the new format is probably hipper and cooler with the little thumbnails and all, but I’m not wild about the extra click. I liked opening your blog and just getting into it. So I had to backtrack sometimes. And I vastly preferred the previous banner.
I’ll probably get used to it. But it really isn’t as pretty as your last one.
Apologetically,
Sasho
Thanks for your honest criticism, Sasho. This new template is by no means done. And the old one is still uploaded, just deactivated. Part of the need to upgrade came from the fact that all the recent upgrades of WordPress had just made the old template increasingly less functional. Look for extensive tweaking — as more and more lessons from my current HTML & CSS classes gel. And the banner is just a placeholder for now. I ran out of steam and had to get something up and the old banner wouldn’t fit. But I can’t have a banner without featuring terrier pictures, can I? Look for them to make an appearance.
One of the issues with the little thumbnails and lots of various content on the front page is that I have so many different audiences. Some come for cowboy stuff. Some come for terriers. Some come for flora and fauna pictures. Having lots of choices for posts helps me direct people to the content they want. If the current post is on terriers, but they want something else, chances are there is a thumbnail on it on the home page instead of having to dive through the archives.
Thanks for the tips! I need all the help I can get. Luckily I work at a major University and can learn the code behind the blogs but it takes a while.
I’ll definitely consider purchasing something having read this post.
C-Mom
organic farms will be the trend of the future coz we don’t like artificial stuffs inside our body-*”