Exactly one year ago today I made the switch from Blogger to WordPress, after quite a bit of umming, ahhing and asking myself 'is wordpress worth it?'
Even after doing a lot of research, I still had a lot of questions about making the switch. So I thought that I would answer those questions today and share how my year on WordPress has been.
So let's get started;
How much will it cost all in?
I'm not going to lie, going from Blogger to WordPress isn't the cheapest of things to do. But knowing that I was completely self hosted and had access to a lot more ways to hopefully grow my blog made it worth it for me.
You can easily spend hundreds of pounds when you add everything up. But after doing ALL of the research, I found exactly what I was looking for; Lyrical Host.
Their smallest plan, which I will assume most bloggers will need, unless maybe you're Zoella, is £9.99 a month. Or £99.99 for 1 year (which saves you 17% over the course of the year versus paying monthly). I also got 10% off my first year by using a fellow blogger's code. If you fancy trying Lyrical Host out for yourself you can get 10% off with my code; ELLISTUESDAY.
This monthly or yearly plan also includes free website and email migration (many others charge for this). It also includes a SSL certificate (again, this can often cost extra). For everything that you get, £99.99 a year doesn't feel too bad, particularly if you have budgeted for it.
Who should I go with for hosting?
There are many different hosts to choose from, who tend to get you with a cheaper than average monthly or first year price. Then they raise that to an astronomical price for year two (I'm looking at you Siteground!)
I honestly cannot recommend Lyrical Host enough. The team are there to help with any issue that you have, as well as answering any question, however small or silly they may seem. They rescued my blog when it was completely wiped from the internet (more on that below), helped me set up a fancy new blog email (hello hello@ellistuesday.com) and countless other things over the course of the year. Renewing my domain with them instead of Godaddy, who I'd previously used, was also more than half the price.
What are the benefits of moving to WordPress?
You are self hosted - Unlike many other apps *cough Instagram* which can change the way in which they operate overnight, your blog is the one place where you are in complete control. Being self hosted means that it is 100% yours.
Customisation - You have so many options, meaning that, again, you are in complete control of exactly how your blog/site looks. And you don't need to be a blog designer to do so. You can play about with many a different aspect of your design. From the fonts to colours, featured images and individual blog post settings, you can have your site looking exactly as you'd like it to. And you can even switch things up every few months or year to keep things fresh, without having to fork out for a new blog design each time.
All of the plugins - Utilising plugins alone was worth making the switch for me. There's Yoast which is incredible for SEO (more on that in a minute), Smush which vastly reduces image sizes and so many more. There are even plugins for adding a cookie banner or newsletter signup pop ups. Honestly, I've barely scratched the surface and have already found so many helpful ones.
Automation - Consequently, using plugins means that you don't physically have to do all the monotonous tasks. They automatically do it for you. If you're short on time or find doing those manual tasks a slog, the amount of things that you can have done for you is pretty unreal. From automatically checking for broken links, sharing old blog posts to your socials or reducing large files or images, the list is endless.
SEO - The Yoast plugin makes SEO so easy! It literally tells you how to best word your post description, what keywords will rank best for what you've written and a whole lot more. It uses a traffic light system to let you know when it is optimised to the best of its ability. And you have no idea how satisfying it is to see it all in the green.
Has it actually made a difference to my blog?
My biggest motivation for making the switch actually had to do with my page speed. For years I had unknowingly been uploading super high resolution images. Great for looking at but not so great for my page speed, which was truly in the red.
I would have had to go back into each individual blog post, of which I had well over 600 and literally thousands of photos, to replace each image with a smaller resolution photo. That was in no way viable. Whereas WordPress have several plugins that instantly suppress every photo on your site. That made switching from Blogger to WordPress a no brainer for me. And it's something that I'm glad I did sooner rather than later.
SOME OF MY FAVOURITE WORDPRESS THEMES
Where should I look for themes?
I initially found a beautiful WordPress theme with a company who should not be named (Pipdig). Then, like a week later, all the drama went down with them. Only a few days after switching from Blogger, my entire site was wiped from the internet. Every blog post, every image, every comment, over five years of work, all gone in a matter of seconds. Thankfully the incredible team at Lyrical Host had it back up within an hour and do daily backups.
So it was back to square one for me, when it came to finding a theme and there were too many to choose from. I found this theme on Etsy, which is where I would steer you first when looking for themes. I've listed a few of my absolute favourites above and you can pay anywhere between a few £ to upwards of £50/60 depending on what you're looking for theme-wise.
But don't forget that you can then play about with and customise whatever theme you do buy or find for free, to make it truly unique to you and your blog.
Are there any negatives to using WordPress?
The biggest issue for me when I first switched over was that I had absolutely no idea how to use WordPress! It took a good few days of using it and maybe even watching some YouTube tutorials, to get to grips with it. But after a few weeks using the WordPress CMS was just second nature.
It has so many more features than Blogger, which is great but takes a while to go through. I don't think I could go back to Blogger now though.
It's obviously more expensive than Blogger, which was ultimately free as I all I was paying for was my yearly domain and any blog themes that I purchased. But it's ultimately made such a big difference to how I blog.
So there are my thoughts on making the switch to WordPress and what it's been like during my first year.
What do you use to blog? Are you all about Blogger or are you self hosted too? And have any of you been thinking about making the switch to WordPress?
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