• 5/14: Why I decided to make the blogger to WP leap
• 5/15: WP themes, hosting options and costs (I am using blue host)
• 5/16: The blog design process with Kira (She just opened Primp my Blog for all your design needs!)
• 5/17: A step by step of my WP to blogger switch (He helped me)
• 5/18: Advice for a new blogger thinking about switching to WP

I wanted to give you a general timeline of how the Blogger to Word Press switch goes down. This is what I did, obviously, this is not the only way (or even the right/best way!)

1. Make the decision to switch. This took me about a year : )

2. Decide on a web server (or host). Way too many details here. (I am using blue host)

3. Install WP to your new server. (This should be a 5 minute step, although in the end, I did not do it right, and Suhas re-did it for me.)

4. Import your blogger blog to word press. Depending on the size of your blog this takes about 5-20 minutes. Suhas ended up re-doing this for me too, and he did not loose any posts or comments! The first time I attempted the import this happened…

1. WP has to be installed to upload themes. Your next step should be to choose a theme. I choose Suffusion. You can see lots more on that here.

2. Find someone to help you with your custom graphics (see our process here). I highly recommend Kira from Primp my Blog for all your design needs!

3. Install your custom graphics and build your site. Suffusion makes this easy.

4. At this point, I made a post on the old C.R.A.F.T. to let folks know that my Google Friends Connect was about to go away, and gave other options to follow C.R.A.F.T. This was the saddest part of the switch for me.

5. Once your site looks how you want it to look, it’s time to Redirect your blog to the new Word Press site! This is when I got really nervous, and decided to find help. Suhas was wonderful. He was speedy and patient. Like I said above, he ended up re-installing Word Press to my server and re importing my blog. He charges $100. Totally. worth. it.

6. Since he re-installed Word Press, I had to re-install the site. It was a good exercise for me… ha! It didn’t take me nearly as long the second time around, and least I knew it was all done correctly!

7. Update your nameservers. This is the official thing that will make people able to view your new Word Press blog! Log in to your godaddy account (or whoever you bought your url from) and set your new nameservers to your new host. Call GoDaddy. They’re nice and will tell you what to do. *While you’re in your GoDaddy account, make sure you home address is not listed in your contact info. You don’t want your home address and phone number showing up in whois.com. Your e-mail, address, and phone number (change some digits!) are public information.  See:

1. Changing your name servers is easy, but allowing the nameservers time to make the change takes foreeever. and is totally out of your control. Basically,  different regions of the world will be able to see your new site at different times.

2. The last thing official thing I had to do was clear my browser history. The fancy word for this is cache. Here are directions for that. It’s easy-ish. You can do it!

3. Add some plugins and get ready for a speedy learning curve!

The one thing I wanted to know before I started was how much does it cost? Here’s the breakdown:

• Hosting: $178.20 for 3 years (59.40 per year)
• Custom graphics: $64.00
• Migration: $100.00

Total cost $342.20
Did you know you had to do all of this stuff to make the Word Press switch? Are you thinking about making the switch? I hope I made the process seem fairly simple, and I really hope that you decide to make the leap and join us in the Word Press world!

I hope I’m not boring you to death with the tedious details… I guess I’m attempting to give you what I was looking for when  I finally made the decision to switch. I wanted the real deal. I wanted to know the process. So, here you are a super exciting tale of  switching from blogger to word press:

• 5/14: Why I decided to make the blogger to WP leap
• 5/15: WP themes, hosting options and costs (I am using blue host)
• 5/16: The blog design process with Kira @ Her New Leaf (She just opened Primp my Blog for all your design needs!)
• 5/17: A step by step of my WP to blogger switch (He helped me)
• 5/18: Advice for a new blogger thinking about switching to WP

Lucky for us, today’s post is a lot less technical… we’re talking about blog design! I knew I wanted to give C.R.A.F.T. a new look with the big switch. I wanted a simple, clean, no clutter, look that was fun and well… kind of crafty! My first instinct was to DIY this look. This is slightly embarrassing to admit, but all of my graphics are done on Word (like my doodle owl in this post) or Picassa (any picture with words). I have Photoshop and I’m too scared to open it. Ridiculous, I know. Photoshop is on the to-do list. So, without further ado… here was my attempt at a header for the new C.R.A.F.T. If you follow C.R.A.F.T. on facebook, you’ve  seen this special treat:

Super basic. And uhh… orange and mint. Any-who… I liked the dotted lines of C.R.A.F.T. (reminded me of a sewn line) and the random triangles were festive. I had a vision, but this wasn’t it. I declared I needed professional help. Finding someone to help was the most difficult part of this process. Here was my hunting for design help process:

1. What self hosted blogs have a look I like? E-mail the blog owner and ask who did their design/ custom graphics! I e-mailed at least 10 people.
2. E-mail their designer!
3. Ask for prices and time frame.

That’s how I picked Kira from Primp my Blog… she responded fast, had super reasonable prices, and I loved the look of her blog (Her New Leaf)! She doesn’t install the designs for you, but Suffusion makes installing a cinch.

First, she asked me to collect some inspiration… Just for fun, here are a few that were on my list…

• Oh Happy Day: I like the simplicity of the design with a touch of handmade… I feel like I could doodle that. Probably my favorite over all look.
• The Letter 4: I like these colors too… neutral, clean, interesting… i love her layout and skinny header.
• Inchmark: I always come back to this one, when thinking about blog design… so. simple. but gets her point across perfectly.
• Say Yes to Hoboken- i like the colors…i think I like a lot of white

Next was the exciting part, she sent me my first round of headers…

Which one do you like best? 1 & 2 were my favorites… I gave her my feedback on each one and then within the day we had round 2… it was a confetti explosion!!

At this point I was pretty sure I liked 1 the best.  For round 3, Kira actually mocked up 4 headers in my template for me so I could see the real deal… This was super helpful! She’s good… I like how she gave me options (dots or triangles), different color schemes, etc…

Here are 2 of the headers:

We decided we liked the triangles better, Kira said they reminded her of little scraps of paper… that sold me on triangles. Round 4 was narrowed done to 3 designs… in the end it was either this or what you see at the top of the blog!

The design process was by far the most fun part of the whole switching to Word Pres saga. Kira was not only the graphic designer, but my Word Press cheerleader throughout the process : ) Kira made the 7 social media buttons, the about me picture, and a few buttons! Obviously, the install was the harder part for me, it just took time and lots of patience… Things like this were pretty annoying… I have my lovely header and social media buttons all in place and I could. not. find how to get the words off of my header… no to mention I have 2 search bars in the header… oh man, I’m happy the install is done (for the most part, I tweak it every day).

I truly love the new look… Thank you, Kira! Do you think we achieved the simple, clean, no clutter, look that was fun and well… kind of crafty? If you need a Word Press blog makeover, check out Primp My Blog! You won’t regret it : ) Tomorrow, I’ll give you the low down on the actual migration to Word Press… Talk about exciting stuff

My internet was down all. day. yesterday and today. I did get a fun painting down for over our bed… I repainted the big ol’ ikat canvas (that I just painted)! With that said, I am going to attempt to keep up with the schedule for this week…

• Today: Why I decided to make the blogger to WP leap
• 5/15: WP themes, hosting options and costs (I am using blue host)
• 5/16: The blog design process with Kira (She just opened Primp my Blog for all your design needs!)
• 5/17: A step by step of my WP to blogger switch (He helped me)
• 5/18: Advice for a new blogger thinking about switching to WP

As a blogger blog, you hear about this mysterious thing called Word Press all the time. (Do you feel like this too?) I always wondered why people switch? What’s better about it?  What costs are involved with it? How do you make the switch? I want to de-mystify the Word Press thing for you this week! It’s a scary leap, especially when you’re leaping blind!

Let’s clarify a few things to get us all on the same page:

1. If you have a dot blogspot blog (i.e. nameofblog.blogspot.com)  Your blog is hosted by a google server. Google owns/ controls your blog.
2. If you have a dot com blog hosted by blogger. (i.e. the old C.R.A.F.T., creatingreallyawesomefreethings.com) Google still owns/controls  your blog. (I made that switch on 10.28.2010, 6 months after I started blogging, more on that here)
3. If you have a self hosted blog (i.e. blue host now hosts C.R.A.F.T.) you can use WordPress.org, for free, as a tool to create a fully customizable web site. According to this, “WordPress is limited only by your imagination.”  You own your website (blog).

Blogger makes things simple and easy, but as lots of limitations. Here is a list of reasons I finally decided to switch from blogger to Word Press:

1. I want to own my website and content.
2. Plugins v. gadgets. Blogger uses gadgets and there are a limited number of gadgets.  Word Press uses plugins and there are bazillions and counting. Plugins do everything from help you with SEO, speed up your blog, add a pin it button to posts, make your blog compatible with mobile devices, etc, etc, etc…  Here are 7 essential plugins for craft blogs. Here is the current number, as of this post:

3. Search bar in the header. I just really wanted that thing up there. Maybe you can do this with Blogger, but choosing a word press theme with a search bar in the header is simple.
4. SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I don’t know a ton about this, but did a lot of e-mailing and asking other bloggers lots of questions, the super sweet Linda from Craftaholics Anonymous said, “You can have SEO plugins built into your site to add the tags, target words, and rename your images for you when you are uploading them into your post.  You can add your own SEO tags and titles in Blogger if you understand coding and do it correctly. But it takes a whole lot more time and effort and you have to know what you’re doing. {you could easily just mess up your SEO ”
Pages. I wanted the capability to have more than 20 stand alone pages that blogger allows. Having more pages will let me organize the blog better.
5. I wanted the capability to post on an ad free pages. Blog Her does not allow you to post about things you get paid for on a page that includes their ads… That’s why I started another blog, hi, im jamie, to work with Clever Girls, Social Spark, and Blue Print Social. You can not post on ad free pages with Blogger.
6. Menus. This is also to help organize content. I love the pull down menus. (You can do a limited version of this in blogger, but it’s complicated). See how my pull down menus help organize content…

Since switching to WP, I have found 2 more things that make me like Word Press better…

1. Replying to comments. Blogger recently gave us this capability, but it takes way less time to do it on Word Press. You can reply and approve from your dashboard (vs. doing it from the comment section of the post). You can also install a plugin to make spam comments almost non existent, and there is even a plugin that will save all e-mail addresses from people who comment on your blog. (This could be useful to tell folks about an awesome giveaway, a new series, ask for guest posts?)

2. Uploading and sizing pictures. In Word Press, you can upload a picture and get a link url… you can’t do this with Blogger. You need the link url to make buttons and things for the side bar. You can get this info with other photo storing sites, but it makes it easier since it’s built into Word Press. It also makes sizing pictures way easier. Have you noticed that all pictures in a particular post are the same size now?!

There are certainly a few thins that I’m finding more difficult with Word Press too…

1. Writing a post. It takes more time. I’m sure this is partly due to me being a newbie, but Linda and Dana both said the same thing (they were both Blogger blogs at one point too!)
2. There are lots of things I don’t know what to do with. I’m learning, but there are so many more buttons and plugins and widgets and I feel like I need to know everything… and I don’t. That feels frustrating at the moment.
3. Blog Lovin’. For some reason, this is the one site that has had a problem with the switch. It says this… and I don’t like it, but what do you know… I don’t have any idea how to fix it

I think Linda summed up most peoples feelings when finally decide to switch from Blogger to Word Press, “Its a HUGE change and, let’s be honest, its SCARY. Its like putting your baby into the hands of a computer tech that you’ve never met and hoping they take care of it and they don’t drop your baby…..just sayin.” haha… I love it!

I hope that was helpful. I’m trying to post about the things I wondered/ wanted to know about before I switched! Please leave any questions you have in the comments, and I will do my very best to find you an answer or tell you about my experience!