Erin Talks: Saying Hello from WordPress and How I Took The Plunge
Howdy y’all! I’ve missed you.
I’m typing my first ever proper post on my brand spanking new blogging platform and theme. Have you checked out my theme?! It’s gorgeous, I’m so in love!
As much as I love WordPress, I miss Blogger too but we all knew our days together were numbered. Enough is enough. I took the plunge and I’m so happy I did! I wish I had done it sooner, though.
It all started when I wanted that Blogger Holly & Weave template by Pipdig.co. Do you remember that template and how much I talked about it? It feels like forever ago.
Anyway, I wanted to buy that template for my blog during the Black Friday sale. Pipdig had 15% discount code and with that discount code, the theme is still expensive as heck at USD53.1 (approx. MYR 232)
There’s no way I’m going to spend that much money for a Blogger template when I can use that money to migrate to self-hosted WordPress blog. And then on Friday morning..
I got an email from KotrynaBassDesign about their 50% off Blogger + WordPress themes sale (which ends this Monday 28/11)
I went bananas!
I immediately clicked the banner to her website and I saw that it’s legit guys. Fifty, freaking, percent, off. Even better than Pipdig sale and I felt like everyone is using Pipdig templates these days. Do you know how many blogs I visited that use the Holly & Weave template? A heck of a lot.
So I checked out Kotryna’s Blogger templates all happy and excited because they were fifty percent off at only MYR 90 from MYR 180.
I have had my eyes on Marseille template ever since she released it. I thought that it would be the perfect time to purchase it for my new year blog design (I was gonna keep that template for a month before installing it, impossible, I know)
But. I didn’t like the post layout with sidebar on the right. I mean, I like that type of layout but right now I wanted something grid-style and I didn’t wanna spend more money to custom design it.
At that time, I was just pissed at Blogger for not having that features. I wanted to do something more with my blog. I wanted features that I don’t have to waste more money on or spend five hours just to Google to find the solution. The new Blogger dashboard was not helping, too. I have to click three times to see my stats, approve new comments, and see latest posts. I felt constricted and claustrophobic.
I thought that enough is enough. I’m migrating.
I probably spent a few hours before making my final decision. At 4 pm, 25/11, I purchased the cheapest hosting from Netkl.com for MYR 60 that comes with 500MB disk space, 10GB bandwidth per month enough for 10,000 pageviews and a free domain which I didn’t utilise as I already have a domain from Netkl so they just transferred my domain to the hosting package. If the bandwidth or disk space is not enough, I can always upgrade my hosting.
I went to Kotryna’s Etsy shop to purchase a template. I thought long and hard about which template I wanted to buy and of course I decided to go with Marseille for WordPress. It comes with multiple layout posts and I love the design. So clean and chic.
Netkl activated my hosting at around 5-ish and I had to unhook my domain on Blogger blog and go back to using blogspot.com. I had to install WordPress and wait around an hour or so before I can use the website as my domain had to be configured first.
I was able to access my blog at 7pm and I was so excited to start editing! I followed Kotryna’s manual and my posts were migrated in less than an hour! The theme customisation, however, took me some time to do as I had to customise everything from scratch. It was easy, nonetheless.
I was kind of freaking out in my post on Friday because I had to edit all posts one-by-one to set the featured image so that it shows up on homepage. And then Kotryna emailed saying that we have a plugin for that..
I totally forgot that we have plugins. I installed and activated it and my featured images for every post was up and running except for a few posts that were missing images and needed me to reupload them but that’s okay!
I also installed Disqus comment system on my blog now so you can comment on my posts easily. I updated my Blogger feedburner and I hope that my pals on Blogger are getting my new updates. I also emailed Bloglovin’ about my migration and I hope they can sort it out by tomorrow. I hate not having my latest posts up on Bloglovin’.
My blog is still not done as I have a few problems with it. I can’t view anything beyond page 10 and the monthly archive links are not functioning. Kotryna’s developer team is fixing it for me so I guess I should just wait and hope it get fixed soon. My pages and sidebar are still under construction. I need a few more days to sort it all out. For now, I’ll be looking at my new blog all the time because I love it so! I’m even more excited to blog now hehe.
My advice is if you ever thought about migrating to WordPress, I’d say do it now. Do not wait. I waited a few months because I was scared to take the plunge and now that everything is kind of sort out, I was like, “damn gal, should have migrated months ago!”
And I also moved my email hello@erinazmir.com from Zoho Mail to my hosting/server. Yeay! If you have any problems emailing me, just tweet me or comment on any posts.
