Friday, March 22, 2013

Changes Taking Place - Please Bear With Me



Over the past week I have been doing a lot of research about blogging.  It isn't that I did not do any before I started this blog.  It is just that I did not go really as deep as I should have before starting Collar City Brownstone.  After much online research and soul searching I decided to make the switch to Wordpress.  This is something that I never, ever thought I would do.  I have been very happy with Blogger and it met my needs.  Blogger still meets my needs.  I also just finally got my blog to looking and "feeling" the way that I want, so this was not an easy decision at all.  

The reason that I decided to go ahead and switch over to Wordpress is because I found out that by using Blogger they actually own my content.  What????  Now, I know that I should have known this from the get go, but like many other people I did not read the fine print.  I write every single post here.  I used a Blogger template, but I made it look the way that it does by customizing it.  I share myself with all of you including very personal things sometimes and it boils down to Blogger owning it?  That does not sit well with me, so after several days of contemplation I decided to switch.  I feel almost as if I am packing up and moving across the country.

I created an account at Wordpress.org, which is not the same as Wordpress.com.  At Wordpress.com you are very limited in what you can do and what is available to you.  At Wordpress.org, Collar City Brownstone will be a self hosted blog, meaning that now I have a very small monthly web hosting fee associated with it.  Collar City Brownstone will be parked on the servers at Bright Light Computing where I've had my domain name parked since starting this blog.  They have already begun the process of pointing my custom domain name to the new host.  Their customer service is awesome and available 24/7.

Wordpress has thousands of customizable templates, but I don't necessarily see that as such a good thing because it can be overwhelming trying to pick one.  I chose a template that is similar to what I have now, but even more robust.   I am sticking with Disqus for comments.  I have been really pleased with Disqus so far.  

Having a self hosted blog using Wordpress.org, I will have literally thousands of plugins and more blog design control.  I have been reading a lot of positive and encouraging things from people who self host using Wordpress.org.  Most importantly the content of my blog will belong to ME.  

As soon as I am able to I will be importing the contents on here into Wordpress.  I am praying for a smooth transition.   I will be working on this all through the weekend so wish me luck. 

        

2 comments:

Collar City Brownstone said...

Good luck with your switch to WP! I look forward to your new blog when you have "moved in." Cheers!

Collar City Brownstone said...

Good luck! I have wanted to make some changes myself, but can't seem to get to them.

Joann

http://www.womaninreallife.blogspot.ca/