Sunday, December 20, 2009

Feeble dawn of the WordPress changeover (Please excuse the temporary suckiness)

As promised, we are beginning the changeover to a WordPress format:
The reason I stuck with Blogger as long as I did -- despite the constant pleading of fellow bloggers who are all about the superior coolness of WordPress -- is that Blogger is extremely user-friendly, has lots of built-in widgets, and is easily customized. While I've been a contributor at several blogs run with WordPress software . . . I've never been an admin on a WordPress site, and the learning curve is rather steep. . . .
You can read the whole thing, and please be sure to follow the instructions, IYKWIMAITYD.

10 comments:

  1. Good luck with the switch-over.

    I tried changing to WP and bailed after a few hours. I'm not tech-savvy at all, and I had too much trouble integrating some of the things I had going on Blogger.

    Word of warning... when searching their help to see WHY I was having some of the trouble, I ran across the message that (paraphrased) said: "WP does not encourage blogs that are primarily for profit or traffic-generation. If this is your goal, WP may not be for you."

    So WP might not understand the wisdom of the 5 Rules...

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  2. Wordpress is so much better, you can buy better templates and there are better tools for editing and creating templates. You'll like it a lot more.

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  3. Use Appearance - Themes- Add New Themes (or just go the the Wordpress theme directory

    http://wordpress.org/extend/themes

    This is where you can get a theme that fits your vision of how the site should look. Within the files that comprise the theme will be graphics that you can replace with your own. Normally, for instance, there will be something called "banner.jpg" or "header.jpg" included. Just create the graphic you want, give it the same name, and upload into the same directory overwriting or deleting the current graphic.

    What I do is search the theme directory for one that looks like I want mine to look, with a graphic or graphics that appear discrete and easily swapped out.

    There are a lot of controls compared to blogger, but apart from getting a good spam filter (use Akismet) you don't need to bother with most of them after initial installation.

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  4. I've been using both Blogger and Wordpress for 5-6 years now (different sites), and each has its virtues and flaws.

    In my professional opinion (I've made my living almost entirely online for a decade now), trying to change over "The Other Mccain" at this point is stupid to the point of being suicidal. You'll be trashing your entire base of incoming links, your Google Page Rank, etc., and not getting any functionality out of it that isn't already available right where you are.

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  5. @Scratcher:
    That is why if one is going to use world press, host on your own website, not Wordpress. Site5 has packages that are less than $10 a month and you can do plenty. There are extensions for dreamweaver to edit WordPress templates with preview and it's a lot easier. If Stacy has his own domain name, going to his own hosting of wordpress isn't so bad.

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  6. @ The Right Guy:
    Thanks for the info. I'm not big enough to make it worth paying for... yet. But I'll remember what you said. (Cuz I'm gonna get there someday!)

    Stacy's in a different realm than I am blog-wise, so he may already have his strategery figured out... but after I read on his other post that he might be using the free WP, I thought I'd warn him that they don't seem to have the proper respect for the "5 Rules" (at least on their free service).

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  7. Scratcher makes a good point, I had forgotten the WordPress hosted deal was you can't do it for profit. I think you should keep it here until you can afford to switch to GoDaddy - for a few dollars a month, and I mean like $4.95, you can get a site, and an automatic installation of Wordpress.

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  8. Just an FYI.... You cannot, I REPEAT CANNOT run ads on a Wordpress.com blog. It will not allow it, unless you PAY for a VIP hosted Blog with your own domain.

    I would advise you to go self-hosted, you can get great reseller hosting through Site5.com. I can and will help you with as much as I can. Seriously.

    You know my e-mail, if you want my help.

    -Pat

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  9. Maybe NOW I'll be able to hit the tip jar. PASADENA BABY! (Can you take an I.O.U.?)

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  10. @Scratcher:
    Stacy way ahead of all of us, and it's because he understands how to make this work and he's a very, very talented and skilled writer.

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