Oh, I am abuzz with pride! Afire with joy! Aflutter with excitement!
I have accomplished something I never thought would be possible, given the particular configuration of my brain: I have migrated my blog from Blogger to WordPress!
Now, for those of you outside the supremely geeky world in which I now live, this will necessitate the following two background tidbits.
Q: What is WordPress?
A: It is a heavenly realm where websites go to get awesome, and it is ridiculously complicated to set up in its initial stages. Blogger, by comparison, allows any old Joe or Julietta to blog with ease.
Q: Okay then, weirdo, so WHY would you spend the 72-straight-hours you just spent to move from something easy to something hard?
A: Let’s put it this way, bub: Blogger is for amateurs and I’m done being an amateur blogger. I’ve put my heart and soul into this website, writing (and photographing) with a passion every single day for ten months whilst voyaging the globe. I want what I create to get seen and to look nice, and the answer to that lust is: WordPress.
So now let’s get into the nitty-gritty of what went down over the past 72 hours. To summarize: I had absolutely NO idea what I was doing, I asked for help online every five minutes from strangers on Twitter, techie friends on G-chat and Facebook, and “Live Help Chat” staff from my new host, Dreamhost, and everyone was fantastically eager to assist. When I felt that I could ask for help no more, I Googled my anguished questions and pored over online articles.
Did I mention I haven’t showered in three days and have eaten very little? The effect of getting DEEP into a groove of fascinating learning and progress is, I do believe, akin to obsessive love. It’s psychotic, but it feels kind of good!
Let me narrate for you a thirty-minute episode that occurred sometime around 2am last night, so you get a feel for this.
Me on Twitter: “Why do my new permalinks look so weird???”
Famous Blogger, kindly answering me via Twitter: “Go into your WordPress Settings menu and change permalinks option to date and title, not page number.”
Stranger on Twitter chiming in: “Google likes words in URLs instead of numbers. Changing permalink structure will help your SEO.”
[Note: SEO = Search Engine Optimization… getting lots of hits on Google and thus lots of readers.]
Me, to myself, after following those instructions: “Ok, Permalinks are changed. But now– NO! None of my old Blogger article links work anymore! Help me, oh Dreamhost live chat guru!”
Dreamhost Live Help: “Hm… I knew how to help you before with internal links when you had page number permalinks, but now I’m stuck. Try searching and installing a Plug-in on WordPress to address the issue.”
Me to myself, after some searching around: “Yes! I just found a great plug-in and activated and now the links are ok!”
Two friends on G-Chat: “GO TO BED ALREADY!”
So do you get the gist a little bit? Do you see why I am feeling so triumphant right now? Do you see why I am feeling so thankful towards humankind and all of the strangers who didn’t have to take the time to help me, but did? This was an epic episode! Excuse me while I do a little jig around this cafe and blow kisses all around.
And as you can see, the blog now looks different since its migration. But know this: THIS SITE IS NOT EVEN REMOTELY FINISHED YET! WordPress has more options than Elizabeth Taylor had lovers, and I plan to explore the heck out of them all. The beauty of the ultimate resulting site will make your heart race.
Please, if you have WordPress or web design savvy, by all means contact me with suggestions (or lavish compliments).
But if you have no computer savvy whatsoever (as was the case with me, ten months ago), please take heed to the lesson I’ve learned this week: if a gal puts her mind passionately to something for 72 straight hours, she can accomplish what she never thought she could do. Yippee!
Photo Note: Please forgive that these photos have very little (ok, nothing) to do with this article. They are of a World Heritage Site in Elche, Spain which consists of a spectacular palm tree forest sown by Arabs hundreds of years ago as a sort of oasis within Spain.
Ooh, wait– here’s a great version of what my former students in Boston would call “A Force” which shall attempt to draw a connection between text and images:
The palm trees spring up in Elche with astounding and surprising beauty… just as computer savvy is rising up in my brain!
I need to get some sleep.
The author, Lillie Marshall, is a 6-foot-tall National Board Certified Teacher of English, fitness fan, and mother of two who has been a public school educator since 2003. She launched Around the World “L” Travel and Life Blog in 2009, and over 4.2 million readers have now visited this site. Lillie also runs TeachingTraveling.com and DrawingsOf.com. Subscribe to her monthly newsletter, and follow @WorldLillie on social media!
Dave
Saturday 29th of May 2010
I don't know a permalink from a permanent marker, but the new site looks great!
Todd
Saturday 15th of May 2010
Congratulations on the move. I see you are using Suffusion and are already taking advantage of the help forum :) It is really rare for the developer of a free theme to put as much time in as Sayontan does. He is great.
Melissa
Friday 14th of May 2010
Beautiful install. WP is hard to set up but worth it. :-) One thing I would do is remove the WP attribution at the bottom right. It will be in your footer file. Hackers sometimes use WP Attributes to locate WP installs they can hack. For some reason removing the attribution links seems to slow them down and/or stop them.
Mike Hedge
Wednesday 12th of May 2010
the new site looks great Lil.
=) Mike
Adventurous Kate
Monday 10th of May 2010
Ha, this is only the beginning, Lillie! Wait until you start playing with plugins -- I pull all-nighters on those!
Also, your feed is now showing up in its entirety in my Google Reader, which it wasn't doing before. Great news for your subscribers!