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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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’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, 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
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!
Hey Chris
I can not see any of your articles anymore and everyone knows that is catastrophic!!!
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