For the past few months, I've been a little ... ashamed of my blog.
Granted, the design is super cute. It's exactly what I wanted when I worked with Krizzy Designs on it. I still adore my header. The image of the gal at her laptop, with the chocolate Lab by her side -- well, let's just say that I'm typing on a laptop, and I have a big chocolate Lab sprawled out on the floor next to me.
But lately, I've started to grow ashamed of Blogger, and of my blog name. Southern Web Girl.
In my head, it goes something like this: "Gosh darn it, I'm 28 years old, I'm not a girl anymore! I'm a woman, a professional, DO YOU HEAR ME?" Sidenote: Why would I say, "DO YOU HEAR ME" to myself in my own head? Um yeah. I digress.
Some other things: I don't have a URL of my own. I don't have sexy plug-ins and a custom blog design. It makes me feel ... amateur. When the fact is, I'm a real live web journalist and social media professional. Promise. Pinky swear. Really!
Back in January, I got involved with the Alabama Social Media Association. So involved, in fact, that they appointed me their executive director. And I quit blogging. I saw my colleagues on the ALsocme board shout from the rooftops how excited they were about ALsocme, and I stayed silent. Because I'm ashamed of Blogger.
Blogger shame. Many bloggers blogging on Blogger get a case of the Blogger shame. Just Google "Blogger to Wordpress" and you'll find a slew of websites and services out there to help you make the transition.
But I'm just not sure yet.
Blogger is easy. Blogger is where I've been since 2008, when I started blogging about planning my wedding.
So what's a girl (sorry, woman) to do? What would YOU do? I'm contemplating: 1) Staying here on Blogger as is, no changes, 2) Staying on Blogger but purchasing a URL and new design, or 3) Making the transition to wordpress.org, complete with a hosting service, new URL and new design.
Bloggers, I would love to hear your thoughts below!
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
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6 comments:
You can do a lot more with blogger, and getting your own URL would be a good start,, then If you move later you can just re-point it to something new,, but in the meantime check this out. http://southernwebgirl.blogspot.com/view/flipcard
DO IT! If you enjoy tinkering with every custom detail of your blog's functions and design, Wordpress is the way to go. You can always keep elements of your current design, or convert the template to work with Wordpress. My site is powered by Wordpress, and I love the flexibility.
I've felt the same impulse. However, I've seen some folks transition and not seen an impressive step-up on design or reader experience.
I'm sticking with Blogger because it's easy, functional, and Google has promised even greater things in 2011: http://buzz.blogger.com/2011/03/whats-new-with-blogger.html
You make me look like a baby blogger :)
I think you should do what suits you. Your loyal followers (me included) will follow you and you should be proud of your blog - and represent yourself in a way that you feel comfortable!
- Kez
I think your design here is great - very unique! I have looked at moving to Wordpress a time or two, but everything that I read about it keeps me at Blogger. I haven't had any bad experiences with Blogger, except when Facebook won't let me post links to my blog because it thinks it is spam. But that's Facebook's problem, not Blogger's. I do use a custom URL, but that is partly because I already had my domain name and website before I started blogging. Integrating the blog into my website was free and easy. I think Wordpress would make me pay for using a custom URL, though.
These things that bloggers fret over — platform, plugins, custom URLs — they are not the same things readers usually care about. That should put your mind at ease.
What do readers care about? If you're interesting, if you're informative, if you're funny.
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