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: