Okay, I’m here. I won’t say it was easy. I won’t say I didn’t nearly drive Claudia crazy. I won’t say I wasn’t scared. But I’m here. Many of you might not see the new site yet. It takes time to travel all over, they say, to get to everyone.

Why did I move to WordPress.org? Well, first, I wanted to own my words and my photos. That became more and more important to me over time. Second, a very good friend had her Blogger blog stolen/erased/hijacked, or all of the above, not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. In two weeks. I kid you not. That scared me silly. She was able to retrieve her blog, but not without a lot of nail biting.

Unfortunately with Blogger, there isn’t substantial support for these types of issues. You can write them an email, and I think it’s much like putting a message in a bottle and sending it out to sea. I’ve never gotten an answer from them when I had a question. Didn’t much like that.

What did it cost me? Okay, I signed up with Blue Host (which I will elaborate on in a minute) for one year. I think it was just under $84 for one year. If I’d signed up for more than one year, the price would have been cheaper. I bought the Genesis framework, which was $59. At the same time I purchased the Child Theme, which was $24.95. I purchased Sharon Hujik’s ebook on how to migrate from Blogger to WordPress, and there is a link to look at it or download the first chapters free from Claudia’s blog. (If you buy it from there, Claudia is an affiliate and will make some money). I believe I paid $28 with the discount she was giving. So let’s add that up: I rounded it off to the next even number. $192.00

What would it have cost me had I had someone else do it? The amount varies. But it’s not cheap.

Bear with me as I try to get everything back on here that belongs and the blog roll in its entirety.

I believe I was able to import all of my posts and comments. Near as I can tell anyway. So let me tell you how that happened. I had just under 48,000 comments. Please, if you think you might want to go to WordPress.org, do not wait until you have nearly 1300 posts and just under 48,000 comments. It makes it so much harder. And you run the risk of losing both your mind and a lot of valuable material you’ve poured your heart and soul into. When the comments stopped importing about halfway through, and I could not get them to begin again, I called my host, Blue Host, and they amped up my memory bits (or something to that effect.) And lo and behold, what do you know? There came my comments streaming in just like that.

Blue Host, and I am an affiliate now because I was so utterly impressed, was terrific in every way. So if you sign up with them, please go through my widget in the sidebar, Folks, you can call any time of the day or night, you get a live and knowledgeable person. And they are right here in the US. That sold me right there after going through Dell Hell last week. Although I have to say Dell sent a technician out here to fix my computer within just a few days.

Blue Host answered all of my questions, even if I wasn’t quite sure what I was asking of them, with respect and courtesy. I give them 10 stars. Which is perfect.

Now Blogger is a great place to start out. I was there three and a half years. But I wanted more support when I have problems. I wanted to be able to go to forums and ask questions. I wanted more control over this little gig. I didn’t want to fight the space and capitalization and all the other issues I had each and every time I posted that set my teeth on edge. Yes, I will lose my Followers widget. Eh, if you like my blog, you’ll be able to find me. I already had my domain. Nothing has changed there.

If you have me in your blog roll and my blog isn’t updating but instead sinking to the bottom (because I post every day; it should never sink to the bottom), simply take me off your blog roll and put me back on. You can sign up to subscribe in my sidebar. If there’s any other problems you want to address, just email me.

You can read all of my posts in their entirety on the page you find them on. I have no truncated posts. I may live to regret that. But for now, that’s my decision.

If you wait until, like me, you have this many posts and comments, you will end up importing your material perhaps, but it probably won’t be spaced right. Some of my paragraphs are black; some are gray. I’m sort of anal when it comes to spacing, and the spacing is crazy. But that’s just what happens. So don’t wait that long if you think you might want to go to WordPress.org. Make it sooner instead of later.

One thing I will say about doing it yourself: you learn the inner workings of the whole shebang. Not that I understand it all. But I’ve never even looked underneath the hood of my car, I’m embarrassed to say. But I have looked under the hood of my blog. I have worked with a CSS sheet. I asked questions and sought answers. And I’m here to tell the tale.

I told myself: might as well do it while recuperating from surgery. But I’m as tired as Charlie looks up there at the top of the page. I need some down time. I’m tired of plain old fashioned thinking. I just want to read blogs or thumb through a magazine tonight. Maybe even turn on the TV for the first time in I don’t know how long.

I don’t think I could have pulled this off without my pal Claudia. She was invaluable. PRICELESS. PATIENT. Well, sometimes she got impatient with my way of trying to go too fast and not read through every thing. (When she calls me Missy, I know she’s irritated with me.) But with a lot of virtual hand holding, I made it over here.

They say it isn’t really the destination, it’s the journey. Well, this time I think it was both.