*Long wordy post!
Finally! I have my own domain 🙂
Some background on how I ended up here.
I was first on tumblr under Growing Up with Blake. I thought that would the easiest platform to use, seeing how almost everyone I knew was on it then, and there were so many themes available!
Shortly after, I moved over to Livejournal, when a friend of mine was gathering a group of bloggers to help build users on Livejournal. That was when my blog’s name was changed to Amazingly Still. Livejournal didn’t allow Growing Up with Blake as it was too long.
After playing around with Livejournal for a while, I decided to move again. This time I was deciding between Blogger and WordPress. I wasn’t quite used to WordPress, and I had used Blogger in my earlier years (think teenage years). It also helped that I knew some basic HTML and CSS, so customizing my blogspot was easy-peasy. So I went on to a blogspot site.
Then came news of how some blogspot sites were being deleted by Blogger, after being labelled as a spam blog. Some managed to get their blogs back, some never did (not sure how true). Fear struck me there and then. What if I were to lose everything? I may have backed up everything, but the links to the posts will all be gone for sure!
I thought about things for a while, and spoke to my husband about it. I told him maybe it would be safer to have my own domain. He was very supportive and even paid for my domain, hosting and web design! 😀
Prior to hiring someone to do up my current website design, I attempted to work on it on my own. With the help of Google (my online lover), I managed to install the WordPress platform on my own. I also managed to transfer all my blogspot posts over with the help of a ‘magic button’! I was so proud of myself then!
Until I tried to design it.
I had no idea how to work the theme, nor what all the different .php format meant. It was all a complete foreign language to me! Even after I looked through online tutorials and followed as much of it as I could possible understand, I still couldn’t get anything to work. I was at a complete loss until some mommies from Singapore Mom Bloggers recommended Patricia, a web designer. Let’s just say, I saw the clouds parting and the sun shining through when Patricia replied me. Haha.
And within a week and a half, my website was all up! I was so happy! So happy that I didn’t notice how awkward my posts were until the next day.
The photos were not aligned center, and all the videos embedded in the posts were gone! Also, the spacing between some paragraphs were huge enough to fit a photo. I had no choice. I had to go into each post and edit them manually. And so another week was spent editing over 100+ posts. In between editing the posts, I installed tons of plugins to test out. This part of the process was quite fun, I must say. Haha.
When I finally had all of it done, and I was mighty pleased with my website, I went into housework mode. I had neglected some parts of the house during this process of migration and I must make up for it! So for two days straight, it was housework non-stop. I was hardly online! Haha.
Now that the household chores are back on schedule, my website is all done, I can take a breather and write about this. I’m so happy that I finally have my own domain 🙂
Here are some of the websites that I came across during my crazy research! I hope these will be of better use to some of you 🙂
1. How to Switch from Blogger to WordPress Without Losing Google Rankings
This didn’t work for me cos I had absolutely no idea how to work it, I only followed till the point where I moved all my posts from Blogger over.
2. How to Watermark All Your Uploaded Images
Again, this did not work for me. Besides not knowing exactly how to place this, my images are all uploaded onto Photobucket, and so this doesn’t apply. This only applies to images uploaded onto WordPress itself.
3. How to Re-direct Blogger URL to Another
This absolutely worked for me. Some of you may have landed on this site, after trying to visit my old blogspot. Hehe.
4. Install WordPress from cPanel
I didn’t use this as I somehow managed to find my way around on cPanel, but this was quite similar to what I did.
