As they say, the only constant in life is change. The same has never been more true than with technology, that’s for sure. And this blog is not exempt from such change as well. That’s because with change comes opportunity.
In this case, the opportunity for improvement. What’s about to change changed, you might ask? Well, I’m glad you asked.
What’s Changing?
The blog will still be HelpfulAdvisor.com, and it will still be a source for showing you how to use everyday technology to make your life easier. But, most of what’s changing will be under the hood. I’ve decided to move away from the free Blogger account and back to a self-hosted WordPress platform.
I know, I know, how fickle of me, right? Yeah, it may seem that way, but there is a method to my madness.
Why the Change (again)?
Although I’m not lacking for things to do, one thing I do enjoy, however, is a challenge. In this case, I’d like to migrate my blog from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress site for several reasons. I’ll highlight them here, but let’s keep things clear for a moment. I’ve been extremely happy with Blogger as my free host. I’ve had no issues that I’ve been aware of in accessing the admin console of my blog, or for readers or myself to access the content on the blog.
Frankly, as a free blog host, I’ve been extremely impressed with how smoothly Blogger incorporates all of my Google services into Blogger, and how easy it is to use, administrate, and even add content to my blog.
There lies my challenge. Wordpress can be just as simple, if it is set up as such. As well, it can be extremely complex, if so desired. Therefore, WordPress is amazingly flexible, depending on one’s individual needs.
I’ll write more later about why WordPress is arguably the most functional and practical content management system ever designed for the individual blogger all the way to the most advanced uses that even a large corporation may want to leverage.
For now, here are my main reasons for wanting to migrate back to a self-hosted WordPress site:
1. I’m in the process of completely revamping my hosting services. What better way to showcase how well my servers will perform for your site than to host my own blog on the same servers? Makes sense to me!
2. As my Blogger site has automated tie-ins to Google Groups, Facebook, Twitter, etc., I’d like to challenge myself to see if I can tightly integrate my WordPress site to these outlets just as well as before.
3. I’d like to have a little more flexibility in optimizing my site to be as fast as it can be, while still being functional the way I’d like it to be. With Blogger, I can’t optimize or tweak, but with my own WordPress site, I can. Not that Blogger is slow, but I want to be able to have site that is a balance between being useful for you as my reader, low maintenance for me, and yet, as fast as I can make it just for the fun of it!
4. I found a really cool theme I’d like to use. It’s clean, it’s minimal, and doesn’t bog down the site because it’s so clean. It’s very similar to my theme here on Blogger, but it will be on my own hosted server. Again, loving the challenge of making a blog that loads freakin’ fast for ya, so you’re not waiting for a slow-loading site.
5. My webservers are clustered and redundant just in case. One of the biggest benefits of using my webhosting services is that they are redundant, so that if the server your site it hosted on goes down, it automatically fails over to another server, without anyone knowing. This is so cool, I would just want my blog to be on a fully redundant system. Although I’m sure Google has something similar setup, I don’t know if they do, because they don’t talk about it. I’d rather be sure, so that anytime you want to reach my site, it’s not going to be down.
6. My webservers are redundant, AND they can handle a large amount of visitors without imploding. The redundant nature of the clustered servers not only helps with making sure any website hosted on them is always available, the clustering also helps to make sure that the site can be accessed even during massive spikes in traffic. Yeah, I’m not playin’ around here, I want my blog to be up and ready for anything just in case my site magically becomes popular. Not holding my breath on that one, though.
When is the Change?
I’m actually working on it now… and as I said, much of it is behind the scenes. I’m configuring the server, and getting everything in place first, then will move the domain name over to my new web server account. When that happens, get ready to rock!
What’s the Benefit You, My Dear Reader?
Another benefit is that if you were by chance looking for a reliable webhost, because your current host just isn’t, or you have a free blog platform like I do, such as Blogger, or WordPress.com’s free blogging, well, you can see firsthand for yourself how well my webhosting works, and perhaps you’ll decide to use my hosting services for your site or blog.
How is using my services a benefit to you? Well, before this post sounds all salesy, let’s just say that as I’ve heard many complaints in my line of work about people’s blogs or websites not being on a good server in terms of reliability, I went and tried to create a service that would never let you down.
Whether you are blogging for fun, or using your website for business, you deserve to have a good webhost that will not screw it up. So, with that, don’t take my word for it, visit this site often, and see for yourself if my site, hosted on the same services you can have for yourself is living up to the hype.
More later, as I progress with the migration! Wish me luck! :-)
Image Credit: Flickr/CarbonNYC
