BLOGGER VS. WORDPRESS

I've made it a priority for 2013 to build out a sad little project that I began in May 2012.  I'll admit, I was pretty short sited when I started this project as I was purely focused on the blog (my sweet little shop wasn't even a glimmer in my eye!).  Now, I have to rethink my plans and I wanted to share that process with you.

I was a newbie to blogging and was under the impression that the only way to have a .com blog (not a .blogspot.com one like I have now) was to use the blog templates from Wordpress.  This is completely untrue, you can actually use Blogger and for a small fee upgrade from a .blogspot to a .com).  Anyway, I went ahead and signed up for a Wordpress site, paid my fee, and voila! www.squareviewstudios.com was born. 

That's when things went a little wonky. When I went to write my first blog entry on my brand new site, I logged in and quickly ran away screaming with fright. Wordpress was a bit advanced for me in the spring of 2012.  Blogger was definitely more my speed.  As a result, my .com site sat there unused for months. 

When I opened the shop in October of 2012, I knew I needed to better utilize my .com site.  Honestly, that opened a Pandora's Box.  Should I convert my Blogger site to Wordpress?  Should I buy a theme or will one of the free ones work for my needs? Should I host on Wordpress.com or move to Wordpress.org?  The list goes on...

I'll address each of the decisions individually in future posts, but I wanted to share with you some perspective.  Blogger is great (and for the foreseeable future, my blog will remain where it is), but it has its limitations.  If you're looking for a personal blog platform, it can't be beat.  It's easy to understand and it's completely free.  But, if I had to do it all over again, knowing what I know now, Wordpress and specifically Wordpress.org, would have been my choice. 

With that said, I've found ways using the current tools via Wordpress.com to make progress on bringing my .com site back from the dead.

First stop, I created this custom slider to mimic the ones you find on other Wordpress themes.  It's not officially a slider, but it gets the job done for now.  I show you how I did it in tomorrow's post. Stay tuned!