I did it. I made the jump to WordPress. Please don’t ask me anything about it. Having WordPress and knowing how to use WordPress are apparently two very different things. 
My blog wizard (I was going to insert a picture of the wizard in Wizard of Oz here, but I hate that movie so much, I just couldn’t do it) is a genius, but I am not. Therefore, things may be a bit wonky around here until I figure it all out.
Right now my blog is looking like this….
but I’m hoping it will eventually look like this.
So maybe this is where you come in? Any “get started” advice? Any plugins that are an absolute must? Anyone wanna tell me what a plugin is?
For now, I’m just surfing the web and trying to self-teach. That’s funny.
Show and Share Day will be back tomorrow! See you then!
Latest posts by Chris (see all)
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I’ll admit, WordPress is not my favorite. I know it can do way more than Blogger (I’ve used both quite a bit, by the way) but for now, I’m still hooked on the simplicity of Blogger. Good luck with the changes though, I hope that you get used to it quickly!
Chris I will be following your every move here, after the blogger meltdown a few weeks ago I think a lot of folks are considering the jump. Can’t wait to see how you go, if possible please blog all about it so we can learn too! Good luck.
That’s a good suggestion. As many people that have moved to WP, I’m having the darndest time getting a lot of people to talk about it! They just say “I switched”, but I need more detail. 😉
Yay for making the switch to WP! I think it gives you sooo much more flexibility and functionality.
Plugins are extra options you can add to your site to do cool things – anything from contact forms, to e-commerce, to social network sharing. My absolute musts are a spam protector like Akismet or Bad Behavior, a backup like WP-DB Manager, a contact form (contact form 7 or gravity forms), and something like sexy bookmarks for sharing the love. You might also want to look at commentluv, which enhances your users comments and All In One SEO pack for better control over your SEO.
Other tips:
~ Change your permalinks to a non-default setting. I’m partial to the month and date option. (You should be able to add a 301 redirect plugin to repoint all of your old posts, but that could be an insanely long process so it may be worth setting your permalinks to reflect the blogger structure).
~ Check out sites like WP101 for tutorials.
~ Play! If you’re worried about mucking up your home site, go ahead and create a test site on a subdomain or another unused domain, or even a wordpress.com site and just test everything and see what it does… that’s how I started learning WP. 🙂
Laurie, you are brilliant! Your comment was exactly what I was hoping to get! Thank you so much! I’ll do exactly what you suggested!
Chris
I am so happy you wrote this post! I have thought about making the switch, but too scared to! Excited to read everyone’s comments! Have a beautiful 3 day weekend!!
I’m wondering why you switched to WordPress? Do I need to switch? Is it because Blogger has been a naughty site lately? Should I not forgive them and give them another chance? I know you were looking for help but I need help too. I can’t make all my own desicions myself, ya know?
Good luck – I’m wanting to move to WP too but scared I won’t understand how to do everything.
No tip here, just a random comment. I could totally hear the harp *brrrrrrring* the moment I saw the peacock. Love your blog!
Congrats on the move! Looking forward to seeing what you do here!
I know how you feel. I just switched a month ago and I am still getting used to it. Good luck!!!
CONGRATS, good luck with all the learning.
I am so on the fence with the switch too, it seems everywhere i turn everyone is doing it. Is it worth it? is it a trend? is it really that much better? IDK… I hope that later you do a full blog post on your experience with WP. I would love to learn more. I am scared for a huge change like that. eek. winks- jen
For an easy way to do giveaways “And the winner is…” plugin is awesome! For a “welcome box” when new visitors stop by your blog, “What Would Seth Godin Do?” plugin (visit my blog to see what I’m talking about. There will be a box with subscription reminders above the content.) There are lots more, but those 2 are my favorites!
Awesome! Exactly what I was looking for! Thank you! P.S. Your blog is gorgeous!
Welcome, I’ve only been a WP blogger as that’s what was recommended when I started for fun. There is so much for me to learn- in fact I took notes from Sara & Laurie too. Another plug-in that I like is link-within (only available for self-host in WP- which I believe you are). As you learn please share… Maybe you could host a linky WP party where people share tips, tricks, and favorite plugins. Sounds like there might be a flock of bloggers migrating this way 🙂
I like the way you think! Great idea!
Your post had my fingers itching to register with WP. Blogger will not let me log in and they are currently researching why some members can’t log in. Are they trying to tell me my blog sucks or something?
I love the Comment Reply Notification Plug-In. As long as you resond to comments in the comment section of your blog, then the commenter gets your response via email as well. My readers love it, and it adds a personal touch.
I was JUST looking into that. I’ll go look it up now! Thank you!
Heather & Chris, I made the switch to WP, too, and it’s still a mystery to me! I’m a designer for Blogger (because that’s what I know) but love finding out new things for WP… just installed the Comment Reply Notification and activated it! Thanks!
I just got your response in my inbox. It’s working! 🙂
ok, maybe it’s b/c you’re changing things, but I can only see the title of this post and comments, but no text at all…? aaack, am I doing something wrong?
Nope. It was me. In a click of a button, I jacked things all up. Thank the lord for people who know what they’re doing! All should be good again.
Hi Bloggers!
Well, it was a nice surprise running into this post as I just recently made the decision to stick with WP and get rid of my Blogger account. Read below as I do my best to explain (and provide links):
-The difference between WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG
-How much does .ORG cost? Is it worth it?
-How did I choose a theme?
-What is all the fuss about a FOLLOWERS widget, really?
1. WordPress is a free, open source blogging platform, which means there are a TON of cool techies (developers & designers) who have banded together to create it. Most of them have never met each other. There isn’t one big office they meet in every day from 9-5. Most of them are donating their time to building WP. Why would someone donate their time? Well, for several reasons. Think of it this way. How much time have you “donated” to your own blog?? How much time have you spent building it, designing, thinking of posts, writing posts, collecting pictures (the well-lit ones), making sure the colors and layout is “you”, and telling your friends and family about it (marketing). How much time have you spent studying other people’s blogs?? Aren’t you doing it because you LOVE it and would do more of it if there were more hours in the day?!?
Thanks to the WP developers/designers who love what they do, we have a platform that allows us to do what we love. In my opinion, it really is that simple.
Because most of the WP kids (I use that term to define anyone, myself included, who is giddy about what they do all day) are donating their time, there isn’t a huge staff of tech support. There is a bit of a learning curve with WP. They rely heavily on the community forums. If you have a question, you will most likely find the answer in the forums, which are pretty well organized. Anyone from the WP team usually gets back to you within a day. There are also other developers who don’t work for WP who answer your questions as well.
2. There are two WordPress sites – .COM and .ORG.
Basically, with .COM, just about everything is handled for you – backups, setups, upgrades, hosting, spam blocking, etc. However, your URL will have “wordpress” in it (i.e. http://www.flippinfactory.wordpress.com) and your choice of themes (colors, layouts) are somewhat limited. Even though they add new themes all the time, right now they only have 120 themes. In addition, there a few good companies who design themes specifically for WordPress. With WordPress.ORG, your blog is self-hosted (you need a good web host), you’re responsible for the backups, the security, etc. However, you have more themes and plugins to play with. Read more here about the difference between WordPress.COM vs. WordPress.ORG. http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
3. How much more expensive is WordPress.ORG?
This is what I have found if I wanted to upgrade to WP.ORG:
*A good web host – $7-13 a month
*I own my domain name through Go Daddy, which I pay $12/year.
*A well designed theme (not a custom one) – $65-$100/year. There are quite a few companies who now design themes specifically for WP. Check out Studio Press, The Theme Foundry, and Woo Themes. Or, you search “WordPress themes” in your search engine to see what comes up.
*Custom designed themes, with custom designed logo – $800+. Check out EightCrazy Designs (she designed Inffarently Creative’s blog.
4. How do I Choose a Theme?
First you have to think about what you want your blog to “do”, what functions do you want it to have? Do you want it to be a photo blog, or news blog that has several updates within several categories? Gosh, I hope I’m making sense.
I can be a DIY-er to a fault sometimes. I stayed up for 4 nights in a row “studying” WordPress. I literally created a spreadsheet of all the themes that I liked and the options each theme had. I must have changed my theme 20 times in 4 nights – which is perfectly ok. You can change your theme as much as you want. What was most important to me was a custom header and custom background. I went through all the themes with those options and played around a bit. I couldn’t figure out why my FLIPPIN FACTORY, the one I created in a Word document was so blurry. I went to the forums and within 5 mins I found my answer. In order for the custom header not to be blurry/fuzzy, I had to use a program like photoshop or Gimp(free). These programs allow you to set the exact pixel size of your header.
I must admit that one of the reasons I was really attracted to Blogger was because I could see how many people were following me or following others. Somehow I assumed that 11,000 followers meant that 11,000 people were reading my blogs — which I learned is so far from the truth. What we all really want is for people to comment/contribute to our blogs. Take a look at this very interesting and well written article that completely changed my mind. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/07/07/wordpress-com-followers-widget-no-thanks/
I hope my comments were helpful!!
Happy Blogging (wherever you chose to blog)
Tumaini
flippinfactory.wordpress.com
I have one word: WOW. What a great comment! That could have been a whole blog post! I was hanging on every word you typed, and it was so helpful! Thank you so much!
You are sooo welcome!!
Welcome to WordPress.
thank you for this thoughtful comment. Also, thank you so much for linking to the article regarding Followers Widgets.
My brand-spakin’-new blog just went live a couple weeks ago, and now I am seriously re-thinking these face widgets.
Very helpful. Thanks a lot!
Hey Chris
I can not see any of your articles anymore and everyone knows that is catastrophic!!!
I’m not so sure WP is the answer either. I’m trying to read the just a girl blog posts but I can only see the comments the posts have gotten.
There must be a better way so we bloggers are not at the merci of Blogger/WordPress.
*bisous*
Dane
Don’t get too upset, Dane. It’s something I did! User error, I’m sure!
I can not see any of your posts?? I can see headings, comments, but no posts! 🙁
maybe it’s down? but love reading your blog – I am guessing we don’t live too far away from each other! West coast girl here – Michigan’s great west coast! 🙂
I don’t know what I did! I’ve got a call in to the “paramedics”! Sorry!
It’s all good!
I like word press too. Last year no one could have convinced me to change but I lvoe it now. Blogger has had a lot of hiccups lately too. Hugs and have a great weekend!
14% of the internet runs on wordpress. It may have a bit of a learning curve but I think it definitely allows for more control, as far as the site owner is concerned. I’ve learned along the way that akismet is a great spam plugin but to really make sure you catch it all, and there is a lot, install Antispam Bee. If you want to link to related posts at the end of single posts, use the Post-Plugin Library and Similar Posts plugins. They seems to match posts together more accurately than other plugins. Also, make sure you keep your plugins and wordpress version up to date – outdated versions mean security risks.
I’ve only recently started to follow this blog and this is my first comment, but I’ll just throw out there that I am a wordpress developer. I don’t design, I just code. I know my way around wordpress pretty darn well so if you run into trouble or have a question, feel free to email me.
You probably should have offered that. I will definitely be e-mailing you if there’s a problem! Thanks so much for your helpful comment!
Ya know I keep thinking about switching….that may or may not have anything to do with blogger wacking out on us again and again! I LOVE Tumiani’s comment up there! SO HELPFUL!!!
I was really stopping by to thank you for the inspiration and too say I linked back to in my post today!! You were some of the inspiration behind my new summer mantel! 🙂
http://alililly.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-summer-mantel.html
Yes… I’d love to hear all the details too. My heads been buzzing about changing to WP for a few weeks now.
wish i could help, trying something new can be so frustrating! hope you find some help! enjoy the day, susan
I never used blogger, so I can’t really do a comparison or describe things based on what you’re familiar to with blogger.
The single best advice I can offer (this has bailed me out more times than I can count!). Is get VERY familiar with and very comfortable with accessing your WP file structure via FTP. My current favorite FTP tool is filezilla. I’ve used some others, and this one is my favorite. And I think it’s free.
Beyond familiarizing yourself with the file structure and FTP, I would suggest becoming comfortable with editing .php and .html. You can get by without it, but there’s been so many times when I want to do *just one little thing* and the best way to do it is “brave the code”. Not to scare you off, but sometimes “braving the code” breaks things and makes the admin tool inaccessible. Times like this, I reach in via FTP, grab the broken file, throw it into an editor, fix my errors, and put it back out there. Viola, all is right in my blog land once again.
As for plug-ins. It has been my experience that my needs for plug-ins kind of ties in with what theme I am using. Different themes have different tools and functionality built in already. My favorite theme right now runs on the Genesis Framework. I’m using the Prose theme, which is highly customizable. I am running a minimal amount of plug-ins, but the Genesis Framework has some widget functionality that I was able to take advantage of, which allowed me to use less plug-ins.
Here’s a list of the plug-ins I am currently using:
Well, I went to look, and it turns out that all the plug-ins I have installed are deactivated. I didn’t need any of them after I installed the Genesis Framework. I guess I have some house cleaning to do!
You might also consider shopping around for themes, and investing in a professionally designed one. A lot of the free ones are OK, and I’m sure a lot of bloggers have used them with great success. I found that for the functionality and ease-of-use that I was looking for, I needed to spend a little money. I spent about $80 on the Genesis Framework and the Prose theme. It has been a good investment for me.
My final piece of advise, which probably applies to any blogging platform (and you’re probably doing it already). Is take copious notes. Often. I find that little tweaks here and there take a little digging around to figure out at first, and I usually don’t need to make those changes again for a long time (if ever). I still try to take notes on every little change so I can go back and remember how I got the results the first time around. I note everything from configuration customization to the theme, modification of .php files and/or .html, and even things like custom colors settings for fonts, backgrounds, etc.
I hope this helps!
Smiles,
-denise