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Blog Update

Well guys what do you think of the new look?

I have lost a lot of sleep over this but I am loving all the color that the new theme added and am feeling very professional.  I thought I might give you a little run through of the process if you not too tired of hearing about it…

I started my with WordPress.com which is great for an entry-level blogger easy start-up, easy to use, and relatively inexpensive to start-up even if you add a few customization tools. The drawback was you cannot use custom themes or do any custom design other than font changes (very limited),and color and background changes. So silly me decided it would be easier to just switches over to WordPress.org. Haha, not so easy after all. After acquiring a web host and rerouting your domain name there is an enormous amount of information that has to move over as well. The other drawback here is that start-up is much more expensive since using a web host  involves an upfront payment for a year or two of use. If I would have known ahead of time the hassle this would be I would have spent the extra cash in the beginning and started with Wordpess.org.

Those of you that have read since the beginning may remember this was the original format for my blog. Not bad but pretty generic. I had used this logo for a while I when I built the blog I figured I would keep using it. Well after looking at some other great blogs and getting comments from others (Thanks Libby)  I realized there were a lot of  things I needed to change.

Blog1

So here is the list that I came up with:

  • Continue to work on header/Logo.Possibly use the O in Overby to link my name.
  •  Add more color maybe in the social media links and side bar titles.
  • Work on the spacing in the side bar. Too much space between each heading.
  •  See if the side bar can be narrowed and the main body widened.
  •  Look at possibility of moving from WordPress.com to Worpress.org and getting a custom theme.
  •  Improve about me image, maybe something more creative.

The first changes I made hoping to make the theme I already had work. The logo is a header so that could be changed to just about anything so I updated that first and then changes the colors to match. Improvement but not great, still kind of boring.

Blog2

I went back to my list and realized the only way to get what I really wanted was to change platforms, so here we are. I found a beautiful theme on Etsy with lots  of color and personality and made the move.  Slowly… I used the colors in the new theme to update my logo and I was ready to launchheader4header-73.jpg

So where to next?

  • I still have a lot of formatting updates to do. Some of my pictures and content is out of whack due to the move so I will be working on correcting that.
  • Sill need to work on getting a more creative about me photo.
  • Waiting on Worpress to move all my followers and stats over
  • I need to add a new list of blogs I follow, that will not transfer over.

 

2 Comments on “Blog Update

  1. Hi Maggie – I came across your blog via BYW. Your new header logo is fabulous! I enjoyed reading about your move from WP.com to .org. It’s something I’m considering to do as well.

    1. Thanks for stopping by Sara! The move to.org was quite a challenge but I am glad I did it. It is also better to do it early on when you don’t have so much content to move over. Love being able to make more customizations. Good luck!

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