My Transition from Blogger to WordPress

Like any relationship that is headed downhill I hung on for far longer than was necessary. Or than was good for me. As I mentioned two weeks ago in my post about wedding dresses said last week tough, I am single, so what am I talking about? Blogger and I. In May I made the switch – I am officially a WordPress blogger and could not be more delighted. The transition was not easy but it went better that I expected and now I feel like a butterfly, I can fully spread my wings.

Why Did I Switch?

In my “real world” job I work in the digital department of an advertising agency so SEO and social media actually my job and having my own personal blog hosted on Blogger was just not cutting it. There are so many backend Search Engine Optimization features that I have seen first hand make a huge difference that are just not available on the free Google based platform. I will write a post about this at a later point but it is similar to the phrase, “The shoemakers kids have no shoes.” Ironic, especially because my blog is called Sparkles & Shoes.

Well, I am glad the wonderful Lisette was been able to help me with this transition. After 100 emails, three chats with annoying customer service reps, and 21 direct messages on Twitter we have it figured out exactly the way I wanted. I am sure most people do not have nearly this much back and forth when making the switch but I wanted to make sure every little kink was worked out and Lisette was surely did not dissapoint.

Search Engine Optimization: I am now able to make my blog posts much more accessible to people on the Internet looking for the topic of my blog post. Between being able to add focus keywords, SEO Title, a meta description, categories, and tags I have already seen a huge increase in organic traffic of people searching for easy salmon recipes or the white on white fashion trend.

Plugins: I will do a post all about these but I absolutely love the hundreds of add-on features available on self-hosted WordPress sites that I can use to make my blog standout just that much more. Most of these are backend and will not be seen by anyone, but they are great!

Widgets: With Blogger I was used to dragging and dropping their pre-set options into my sidebar and calling it a day. With WordPress I knew there was a more customization possible and had a list of everything I wanted and Lisette rocked it out of the park, especially with those categories on my sidebar. I wanted an easy way to access the things I talk about most frequently on my blog and I love the interactive widget to feature my posts on fashion, photography, New York City, travel, my style icons, and my Sparkle Session interviews.

Responsive Design: I had a simple mobile template switched on for Sparkles and Shoes when I was on Blogger but it was either a yes or a no. You either got my pretty blog on a big screen or the plain and boring mobile version. With WordPress no matter what size the screen is you will see the nice sleek design formatted differently, which I love! (Want to test it out? Grab the bottom corner of your screen and make the window smaller – see how it changes? Yay!)

Things I Was Was Worried About:

Part of the reason I waited so long to switch to WordPress was because of the issues and negatives I have read from other bloggers who have made the switch. Topping the list of concerns were:

Drop In Traffic: I was worried that switching from Blogger to WordPress I was going to see a huge drop in my site traffic, especially with the number of people that were following me on GFC. Well, this was true but there is not much you can do about it. After two months, I have seen my numbers continually rise and I am almost back up to where I was. It is a short term loss for what I know will be a long-term gain but still hard to stomach. I also could have mentioned more in my posts in the weeks leading up to the switch what I was doing to encourage people to follow S&S via BlogLovin’ or social media. Oh well, you live and learn.
Domain Transition: For almost two years my blog existed at the original free domain, myfavoritethingskellyann.blogspot.com, hosted by Google and was redirected to Sparkles and Shoes. I was worried that with WordPress I was going to have to host my own blog and move hundreds of posts and thousands of comments to my very own place. Well, that is true but if you work with someone who has made the switch dozens of times before it is a very do-able process and I did not loose any content in the process!
Design Glitches: Again, Lisette to the rescue! She made everything appeared just the way I wanted it and was able to transfer the amazing design created for me by Aubrey Kinch of Kinch Life Designs and made it WordPress compatible.
Pinterest Links: I had read articles from bloggers who had pinned hundreds of images from their site on to Pinterest and once they switched to WordPress all of those links no longer properly or connected to the post in its new location. I do not know the technical details behind this but I voiced my concern and Lisette made sure it did not happen, all links are working perfectly!
The Cost: I am not going to lie, it was expensive, at least in my book. Switching from a free platform to all of sudden having to dish out hundreds of dollars was rough. However, it is well worth it. Through High Note Designs I chose LUXE Blogger to WordPress Transfer Package which covered everything, soup to nuts for $155. I feel like having Lisette working on my team through this process was worth every penny and then some. What I did not consider was having to purchase my own hosting, renewing my domain, and placing a security on it. These were additional expenses (I chose to go with Blue Host who also serves my email, [email protected]), but I consider them a long term investment in this blog.
So what is new? Well I kept the same design that the lovely Aubrey made with a few tweaks: there is a scrolling header that as you travel down this page goes with you. And as I mentioned above, there is also the categories widget on my side bar, along with a list of my favorite blogs and shops, and a vibrant, live updating favorites widget.
What do you think of the new Sparkles and Shoes?

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