For almost 2 weeks now, I’ve been working off and on to switch Bargain Quest to the WordPress platform.
Previously, I was using Quick Blog. Haven’t heard of it? I’m not surprised. It’s GoDaddy’s blog system that I fell into by default when I started my blog in July. (That’s where Richmondbargains.com is registered) I picked it over Blogger because it was the easiest way I knew to have my blog on my own domain. I was young and silly.
To be fair, Quick Blog was very convenient. It looked professional and was easy to use. Godaddy also charged me $3 a month to use it. What really drove me nuts was the inability to customize anything beyond a few colors. The default font color for my posts was grey, so I had to recode every single post to a readable black and maroon.
Quick Blog’s biggest limitation for me is the fact that it’s not widely used. Unlike Blogger, WordPress and other popular options, no one designs extra plugins and functionalities for it, and when you want to leave, no other program has an automated process to import the content from Quick Blog format!
Having to move the blog was inevitable anyway. I’m in the process of setting up the main Richmond Bargains site as well and didn’t want to host it with GoDaddy. So redirecting the nameservers to a new host was going to hamper or prevent further public access to the blog in its Quickblog incarnation.
The good news:
-I got 90% of my posts over. The formatting isn’t perfect and graphics are missing, but the content is there. (My very first posts for the month of July are having to be added by hand.)
The bad news:
-Old comments are gone. I don’t think there is/was any way to bring them over, because Wordpress doesn’t have an import option specific to Quickblog. Eventually, I’d like to go back and edit posts to include the comments made. In the meantime, please comment away on new subjects or go back and repost if you thought something was important to say.
-Some previous feed and all email subscriptions have ceased. Sorry! If you were receiving automatic Bargain Quest updates, you may have to rejoin. I think RSS is functioning now, but I’m still working to get an email subscription plugin. Keep checking back!
It’s fun, albeit slightly nerve-wracking, to be able to mess with the “guts” of the blog. Most of the time I have no idea what I’m doing, but I enjoy the challenge, even though the first few days on Wordpress were harder than anticipated. I couldn’t save new posts OR delete old ones (more of a Wordpress glitch). That problem is partially patched.
Since I’m doing all this reconfiguring anyway, if there are any features you think I should add, please let me know. And if you’re a Wordpress guru who has any helpful suggestions, I’d love to hear ‘em. Leave a comment or email me at richmondbargains at hotmail dot com.