Not so disgruntled

May 9, 2012 by 2 Comments

A week ago, I shared my disgruntlement with Blogger’s recent changes and shared my ambition to get a little more professional in my web presence and convert (at some point in the near future) to WordPress. The following day I received a text from my WordPress teacher asking: “Time for lizclutterbuck.com?” and attaching a hyperlink to a page listing the various variations on that theme that were available domain names. (Which pretty much amounted to anything – we Liz Clutterbucks are a select bunch!)

By the end of the week, lizclutterbuck.com was mine (it currently just redirects to this blog) and plans were afoot for exciting developments. I’m very lucky to be blessed with techy, webby friends who are very generous in their time and abilities, so I’m going to have a lot of assistance in the process. It’s all very exciting, but leaves me with a lot of questions, that you may be able to help me with…
  • What form should the site take? Do I still want the blog to be its main focus, or will it be one component of a larger entity? 
  • Which of the gazillion WordPress themes should I use? 
  • Do I add other aspects of my life to it? [There’s already been a request for sermons. I don’t have a huge back catalogue of them currently, but it’s something I could build upon.] 
  • How do people like to read blogs? Do people dislike ‘Read More’ hyperlinks as much as I do? 
  • What sites do I like and can I get inspiration for my own site from them? 
  • What sites do other people like? 
Fun times. The research phase is now underway, so any suggestions would be gratefully received! In the mean time, I will sporadically burst into spontaneous geeky giggling…
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Disgruntled

May 1, 2012 by 7 Comments

After many, many years of happy Blogger use, I’m becoming increasingly disgruntled with the platform. I’ve long lusted after the clean, sharp feel of WordPress blogs, but couldn’t bear the faff of moving everything over and learning a whole new system.

But lately, a few things have happened that have begun to change my mind:

  • I’ve taken on the management of a WordPress blog [well, officially a blog hosted on a WordPress site which is apparently slightly different] and I’m being taught how to use it properly by someone who (kind of) knows what they’re doing. Turns out it’s not that difficult and many things are massively more sensible than Blogger’s system.
  • Blogger have rolled out a new user interface that has arrived with many quirks, despite having been in Beta for ages. Lots of things just aren’t working and no one seems to be taking notice of feedback or complaints. Scheduled posts (writing a post to be published later – a very useful feature) hasn’t worked for 3 weeks and hasn’t even made it on to the ‘Known Issues’ page. 
  • I think it might be time to take my online presence a little more seriously and make things look rather more professional. WordPress seems to lend itself to this more readily than Blogger.
I’m not totally decided though. For a start, this could be quite a big, faffing, project and I’ve actually got quite a lot of work and sermon writing (and moving flat) to do between now and mid-July. I could also make quite a massive mess of it if I’m not careful and I’d hate to lose 5+ years of considered blogging and comments. But potentially this could be an excellent summer project, especially if I can persuade my WordPress teacher and professional webby friends to help me…
But I’d welcome your thoughts. Blogger people – should I stay? WordPress people – is it worth it? Has anyone made the switch themselves? Was it a nightmare? Thoughts would be very much appreciated.
In the meantime, Google, could you get your act together please? 
Yours, disgruntled of King’s Cross.
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