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Blogger or WordPress?

By: Stephanie7 Comments

 

Some great points about both options to consider. Should bloggers be on the WordPress or Blogger platform?

I make no claims to be a tech expert. I’m just a lady with a blog who writes funny stories about my kids and is hoping to parlay that into a writing career. (So far this plan is going surprisingly well. Don’t let the powers that be in on our little secret that I have no idea what I’m doing, k?)

Lately I have had “quite a few” people tell me they were interested in starting a blog and ask if I would give them tips on how to get started… Okay. Fine. You win. It was only two. Two people asked recently and one more asked a few months ago. Regardless, I know a lot of other people have the same question, so I thought I would spend some time focusing on it today. 

The first thing people need to decide when they are starting a blog is if they want to use Blogger or WordPress, the two main platforms available.

I will tell you that I started out on Blogger and I loved my little site over there for several reasons. I stayed over there for years.

WHY I LOVED BLOGGER:

  • It is very user-friendly. Anyone can set up a site in a matter of a few hours, sometimes less.
  • It’s free
  • It’s easy to customize. There are tons of great resources on Etsy for very affordable customization options or you can easily design your own headers, buttons, etc. in a software program like PicMonkey.
  • The community is nice. It is easy to follow other blogs right from the reader on your dashboard. The people who use Blogger tend to comment on each other’s posts more often, participate in link parties, and just check-in regularly,  in my experience.
  • You can pay to have the .blogspot removed from your name and make yourself appear more professional. I know A LOT (I have connection, yo. Actually, what happened was I somehow managed to weasel my way into a book with several of them.) of very successful writers who use Blogger and it works for them on a professional level. These ladies use Blogger and are still swimming in money a la Scrooge McDuck. I actually do personally know-because of my involvement as the founder of the BlogU conference- several prominent writers who get literally millions of pageviews per month who are very loyal to Blogger because it is free and can handle their traffic. 
  • You don’t have to worry about things like plug-ins and widgets, for the most part. Google owns it, which helps with the usability, and it is very easy to track your stats and create your design. It’s simple to use upfront AND it is easier to customize, in my opinion.

Blogger is perfect for you if you just want to start a small family blog or if you are a small business or a student.

Having said all of that, I still made the choice to switch to WordPress last year. There was a BIG learning curve for me. For starters. I learned the hard way that WordPress.com is TOTALLY DIFFERENT than WordPress.org.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO GO WITH WORDPRESS, YOU WANT TO BE SELF-HOSTED ON WORDPRESS.ORG!

I’m sorry I yelled at you. I just can’t stress that enough. WordPress.com was nothing but a big headache for me. You can only use certain templates, so if you have a specific design in mind, you can’t do it and it is just very limiting all-around. It was not a good match for a creative type like me. They also do not allow sponsored content, so you can’t make money. However, WordPress.com is free, so it does have that going for it.

If you want to be self-hosted  on WordPress.org, which tends to be what all of the pros recommend, you need to know some things up front:

  • Make the switch early. It is a big pain in the neck to switch from Blogger to WordPress if you are keeping track of your stats. If you work with sponsors your stats are very important. When you switch you will basically be building your following from scratch. It is not fun and it takes a while to regain momentum. If you think you may ever want to become one of the “big guns” and turn blogging into more of a career than a hobby, just start on WordPress from the beginning.
  • Have a budget. It can be kind of expensive in comparison to other options. (Because the other options are free.) You will need to purchase a domain name and hosting and a good theme. I like the Genesis theme because it has a lot of nice child themes that fit my style and it has some great plug-ins.

Now that I am over the initial learning curve for WordPress I am glad that I made the switch.

REASONS I LOVE WORDPRESS:

  • The plug-ins. Think of a way you would like to improve your blog. There’s a plug-in for that. I never even thought of SEO before switching to WordPress, but now I use the SEO by Yoast Plug-in to optimize every post and it makes a big difference in my traffic. I also like Jetpack and the social sharing plug-ins.
  • It’s social media friendly. It’s VERY important to have options for sharing on social media on your posts and it is much easier to do that with WordPress. I have  plug-ins that puts options for sharing my posts to Facbook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Pinterest with one click. (This feature has been updated on Blogger since this post was written.)
  • Less spam. SOOOO much less spam. I get at least 30 emails every day from anonymous commenters on my Blogger blog trying to hype their diet pills or whatever. I’ve been blogging on WordPress for about 7 months and I think I’ve only gotten about 5 spam comments.
  • Connecting to readers. It’s much easier to find a reader by clicking on their name in the comment they left on your blog and getting an email address than it is to get in touch with the readers who comment on Blogger blogs without any contact information in their profiles. I find that it is a little easier to build an internal community with the people who read my blog now, but WordPress users tend to be on their own little islands and it is harder to find connections between bloggers, if that makes sense. I think it has a lot to do with the dashboard not having a reader on it. Now I have to seek out other blogs to read and I often forget to do it because they just aren’t right there in front of me like they used to be. WordPress users also tend to be more “seasoned” and focused on their own blogs and will not usually return a comment for a comment, as was a little more common when I was on Blogger. However, it is easier to see a response from a blogger using WordPress because it will often be emailed to you that you were given a reply on a comment you left on someone’s post. On Blogger if you left a question on someone’s blog, you had to remember to keep going back and checking to see if they answered you. If they sent you a private email response, no one else who read the post and had the same question would get to see the answer.
  • Expanding your reach. In the 7 months since I’ve switched to WordPress I have seen my traffic and following expand to about 10x more than it used to be. A lot of that has to do with my own networking, but I attribute a great deal to the WordPress SEO and social media factors above.
  • You own it. Kayla of Sweet Anne Designs recently pointed out in a discussion about this very topic that she would not feel comfortable setting up a client on Blogger because Google owns your site if it is hosted on that platform and they could possibly decide to shut it down in the future (re: the recent Google Reader fiasco). If you are self-hosted, you own your own site and you have all the control and peace of mind that comes with that.

I like to think of the difference between Blogger and WordPress as the difference leasing and buying a car. With Blogger you are just leasing your website from Google, you don’t actually own it. With WordPress, it is completely 100% yours to do with as you please. There have been cases where blogs have been marked as spam and removed from Blogger for months. If your blog is a main source of income for your family, that is a serious problem. I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not here to give you business advice, but I do I do think that it’s preferable, at least for me, to have complete ownership in every aspect of my company. 

However, there is a much bigger cost factor involved with WordPress, especially as your blog starts to grow. Once your traffic reaches the point where you need to move to a dedicated server, you should be prepared to spend anywhere between fifty to several hundred per month in addition to your domain and hosting fees. That is the trade of for the security of ownership. 

I made this handy-dandy chart for those of us who like visuals.

Blogger or WordPress

That’s pretty much all I know. I hope it helps a little. 🙂

 

 

 

My Stitch Fix Experience

By: Stephanie2 Comments

Back in February I tried Stitch Fix for the first time. I was really excited about the idea of having clothes delivered to my door so that I didn’t have to deal with the pain of shopping with three kids.

I’m going to two blog conferences this year (The first one is in just two weeks!) and I’m having a little bit of anxiety over what to wear. I have never been before, but I have visions of showing up looking all plain jane and everyone else wearing adorable handmade vintage clothes they bought from secret Etsy stores where all the cool kids (read: not me) shop. I was really excited when my first fix arrived a day early, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

stitchfix1

I thought Stitch fix might be a great option to get some trendy pieces that still felt like my style. Here is what they sent in my first fix:

stitch fix example 1

 

Yeah, I modeled these without brushing my hair or putting on any make up. Sue me. I liked this shirt a lot. It was really comfortable and the collared look was not something I would have chosen, but I liked it once it was on. I thought it had the most flattering fit of all the pieces they sent. It’s the only piece that lets you see the actual shape of my body. Plus it reminded me of something Zooey Deschanel would wear on New Girl and I loved that. However, I did not like that it was completely see through. I hate having to layer clothes because it makes extra laundry for me. If the material would have been thicker I would have kept this one, but I couldn’t justify paying $50 for a shirt that felt like it came from Forever 21.

stitch fix example 2

This striped shirt tied for my least favorite piece. The fabric was terrible, like a scratchy outdoor cushion, it was totally see-though (again) and it was also pretty expensive. All of the items in my fix were between $50-75 dollars. I felt like this was the most uncomfortable piece to actually wear and it wasn’t very flattering on my body type.

stitch fix example 3

I HATED this one. I don’t even have one good thing to say about it. You can see in my face, I’m pretty annoyed. It’s like a bad maternity shirt, completely see through (AGAIN) and expensive to boot. Definitely the most unflattering thing I have ever put on my body. I’m really not sure I believe that a professional stylist could have possibly chosen this for someone on purpose.

stitch fix example 5

This black one I actually liked and it was pretty comfortable. But it showed off too much of the ladies and again it was a bit pricey for the type of material. I also felt like it made me look bigger than I actually am, which is always a negative. Back it went.

stitch fix example 6

This white sweater is the only piece I chose to keep. I needed a white sweater anyway and I liked the placement of the pockets and the material is not too heavy or too flimsy. This is actually the sweater I wore to my first book signing.

book signing

Now that I have had some time to reflect, my final thoughts on Stitch Fix Are:

PROs-

*I actually liked 3 out of 5 of the items they sent and I kept one. Not bad for the first time.

*Delivered to my door meant I didn’t waste any time or energy lugging three kids around the mall or spend any money on a baby sitter.

*The convenience of the return was awesome. You just stick the clothes you don’t want into the paid envelope they provide and mail it via a regular mailbox.

*I like the way that you can earn credit by referring friends and the way that your $20 styling fee is applied to whatever you choose to keep. (Disclaimer: if you place an order through my link I will get credit towards my next fix, if I chose to order again.)

*I liked the style cards that came with each piece, suggesting a few ways to wear it.  This is the one from the sweater I kept:

stitch fix style card

CONs-

*They don’t seem to be great at dressing “plus sized” women. In real life I fluctuate between a size 8 and a size 12. None of those sizes are actually plus sized, but unfortunately in the fashion industry they are considered humongous.  I asked for size 10 clothes for this fix. Everything fit me, but you will notice they only sent shirts and 4 out of 5 (including the sweater) were pretty matronly. This might be my fault because I chose “mostly loose” on my style profile when they asked how I prefer my tops to fit. I also asked that they avoid sending pants because I don’t need any. That does not explain why I didn’t receive any dresses, jewelry, or other accessories in this fix.

*I was nursing a baby at the time (thus why I chose “mostly loose”) and the sweater that I kept was the only option that was convenient for that. Again, this isn’t really their fault, but might be something the company could consider in the future.

*The quality of the clothes, in my opinion, was definitely not worth the price they were charging. I understand that they have overhead costs, but so do the stores at the mall and I really felt like the quality of the clothes I got was comparable to a store like Forever 21 or H&M. I would have paid less than half of what Stitch Fix was charging by going to those stores.

*I have other friends whose fixes have included a tank to wear under a sheer top. I thought it was a little unfair to send me 3 sheer pieces and nothing to wear under them.

*They don’t seem to really understand their audience. Stitch fix seems to be catering to young professionals. However, most of the young professionals I know are too savvy to pay these prices for this quality. Those are the women who can find time to shop and buy nice clothes and have them tailored. They don’t want cheap fabric.  The idea behind Stitch Fix is genius and I love it, but they would be smarter to cater to moms and bloggers who have the influence to expand their reach and are willing to pay for convenience. (Says the woman who happily pays for the groceries to be delivered or for baby sitting services in the mall.)  As it is, I got the impression that my lifestyle and my body type just weren’t hip enough to fit into their ideal client base. That just seems dumb to me. Moms buy clothes too, and not just for ourselves, for our entire families. I feel like they are missing a big opportunity by not catering to moms and don’t really care because they want to seem cool.

 

After the fix I filled out the report they requested explaining what I thought of each piece. I feel like that might help personalize my order the next time around, if I chose to try again. So far I have not placed an order for another fix, but I might consider it in the future. Overall, I’d give my experience with them a B-.

Have you tried Stitch Fix? What was your experience with them like?

 

 

 

Building the Dream: With Superior Walls

By: Stephanie7 Comments

Last Wednesday our basement walls went in! The crew spent the rest of the week leveling and tamping the stone to support the concrete floor, roughing in plumbing, and doing other important stuff that I don’t really understand.

Superior Walls in Our Basement

We chose to go with a company called Superior Walls because our builder recommended them and Eddie, who is a professional engineer, was really impressed with the kind of concrete they use and the way they are installed on top of many inches of stone. Apparently, the way they manufacture and install these walls is very similar to the way some types of bridges are built and, since a bridge is made to be much stronger than a house, this is a good thing. They are also more water-resistant than your average basement. Eddie says this is because of the fiber and steel-reinforced high-strength concrete that they use, which is continuously poured within climate-controlled conditions. Although they are more expensive up-front,  they come with insulation (R 12.5) and concrete studs with metal facing already in place, which means it will cost us less money and be a faster process when we go to finish the basement in a few years.

My favorite part, though, was that it only took about 3 hours for them to go up!

I spoke to Eddie at 8:45 and the crane was just arriving. By the time I pulled onto our land at 11:15, this is what we saw:

superior walls 1

superior walls

We went back a few times this week. Saturday we spent all day relocating a few baby trees and climbing giant piles of dirt.

superior walls 3

superior walls 4

The kids were in their element, especially Nick.

I liked being able to get a good idea of the size of the basement and see actual work being done! We’ve spent SOOOO long just waiting for permits and weather that it was an overwhelmingly happy experience to see it start to become a reality.

superior walls 5

The concrete floors are scheduled to be poured today, but it has been raining all week so that might need to be postponed another day or two.

I’ll check back in next Wednesday. It will be fun to see how much gets done each week!

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