Blogger to WordPress: Why I choose to switch

Happy Monday! I hope you all had an incredible weekend. I wanted to say thank you to all of you who checked out my rebrand/move. I really appreciate it. Please keep coming back and spread the word!

With this rebrand I have a mini series about my switch. Today I wanted to share with you all why I choose to make the switch from Blogger to WordPress. Being that all things blogging I knew that there was a difference between Blogger, WordPress.com, and WordPress.org. Also, being a Web Design Major I had just started learning more about self hosting and what it could do for my blog.

Moo’s Musing has been on Blogger since the very beginning. When I was first starting I questioned lots of people and their choices for how to host their blog. A few of my friends told me that wordpress was simply the way to go. However, as a blogger newbie it was really confusing to me. Blogger just seemed easier to understand, and was really simple to make it look how I wanted. However, as my blog has grown and my knowledge of blogging I really wanted something that would let me have my own domain and customize the look and feel exactly how I wanted. So WordPress.org was the way to go for me!

PROS OF WORDPRESS:

Extremely customizable: This was one of the main reasons why I made the switch. I wanted to be able to have a theme or simple design one that was customizable to exactly what I wanted. By using WordPress.org I could do that with a simple click of a button. As I learn more about web design I wanted to be able to change up my website however I wanted too. However, WordPress.org is easily customizable with a lack of coding knowledge as well.

I own my content: This is something that I recently learned…and it was a little freaky if you ask me! I don’t think I could do a good job explaining this, but here’s a good article that explains everything!

Plug In’s: I keep discovering more and more plug ins! It is so exciting!! There are an incredible amount of plug ins that are simply apart of wordpress. I don’t have to use an outside source to get any of them!

CONS OF WORDPRESS:

Money: To use wordpress.org it is free. However, I have to pay for annual hosting (through Bluehost), I chose to purchase a theme (Hemlock, which had an extremely helpful chat support), and any plug ins that you choose to buy. These purchases can add up, and be an investment.

Time/Process: I had a pretty smooth changeover. I was able to use a plug in to transfer all of my posts, and pictures from Blogger. However, I have heard some pretty scary horror stories form people who didn’t have it so easy. It was also a little time consuming getting everything customized as I wanted(however, I enjoyed the process).

Potential traffic loss: This wasn’t something I really considered until I read Whitney’s post about her blog transfer, but I could lose some of my readers. I have tried my best to make sure everyone knows that I have switched and the url has changed, but people could very easily miss out on the fact that my domain is different.

IN THE END

It is completely up to you and how you want to blog. I know people, and read people’s blogs who are very successful and use blogger. Each site has it’s own pros and cons. I know that blogger worked very well for me for 2 years. I just felt like Moo’s Musing needed to be moved.

If you have any questions about this post, or how I migrated my blog please feel free to email me! I’d love to help!