I’m back—the Blogger to WordPress Moving Experience

Friends…. I’ve missed you! Seems ridiculous that only a few days without my site being up and running and I’m a crazy mess. But, after having the blog for three years, seeing my site come up as non-existant was a little nerve-wracking.

I’ve worked with WordPress and Blogger for a long time. However, I’d had my main blog (this one) sitting at Blogger for about a thousand and one reasons. I liked Blogger a LOT. There are some fabulous benefits for using blogger. (A post for another day.) I did end up making the move to WordPress though!

Read on to see the reasons why I moved, the things still needing attention, and some fun new features of my site since the move. I’ll post about the move’s process another day.

So, why did I make the move to WordPress?

• I was accepted into an advertising partnership that requires the ability to post some of my posts on pages without their ads. The only way to do that with blogger is to have two blogs that look identical (except for the ads) and post a link/teaser from one blog to another. This was terribly annoying to do… WordPress, on the other hand, has a plugin that makes it SUPER easy to post within the site and choose what items are shown in my sidebar area.
• The commenting on WordPress is SO MUCH BETTER than blogger. I am getting a ridiculous amount of Spam now, unfortunately. Fixable with a plug-in and on the to do list. I’ll have a better time with replying to comments now.  
• I’ll be able to upload items for you to download here on my site.
• I will be able to add galleries to posts!

Things I Still Need to Do on the Site:

So much still to do on this site before it is to where it needs to be…. I’m going to be working on it for quite some time.

• Fix any broken links. Thankfully, WordPress lets you choose how you’d like your links to look. I originally chose a prettier permalink system…but, decided it was easier to choose the one that was already being used via blogger so I don’t have as many broken links. There are some that I need to go through and fix still. WordPress has a widget to tell me which links are broken—another big plus!
• Configure pages. I want my pages to help readers locate posts more easily. But, that requires going back through over 500 posts to set items like featured images, tags, and categories.
• Speaking of categories, I love how WordPress has tags and categories. Blogger only has tags, but when uploaded into the WordPress system, all of the tags turn into categories. So, now I have hundreds of categories, when I don’t need near that many.

Fun New Features for A Well Crafted Party

•  Flares— I’ve made it super easy to share items with a Flare widget. The Flare toolbar is at the top of each of my posts for you to easily share or like the posts on your social networks. And, I really appreciate seeing flares! 
• Specific Pages that will make it easier to find articles here on A Well Crafted Party. I know some of my readers only want to see party stuff…while others want to read my other posts. This will be an easy way to see the posts you’d like to see! (Still in progress)
• Author Box— At the bottom of each of my posts there is an author box with links to all of my social networks.
• Simpler advertising. Advertising on A Well Crafted Party has never been easier! Thinking about sponsoring this blog and advertising your blog or business through A Well Crafted Party? Check out my sponsorship page for more information.

Thanks for reading and for sticking with me during the move. If you usually enjoy reading through a reader then you’ll want to change my RSS feed to the current one or Follow my blog with Bloglovin.