Blogger

Why WordPress is Like a Treadmill

July 13, 2019

To WordPress or not to WordPress? That’s a big question I get asked frequently. Not sure what’s best for you? Here are some things to think about.

If you’re thinking about making the switch, it’s because you’ve heard some of the positives about the WP platform.
•Better SEO capabilities
•More flexibility with themes and plugins
•More control over your content
•The ability to sell directly from your site

With all of these advantages, why shouldn’t everyone jump ship and head to WordPress?

Because WordPress is like a treadmill.

Think about getting a treadmill. You’re going to have to spend a lot more money on it. Walking is free, but that treadmill is big bucks. You’re going to need to create space for it, put it together, maybe buy some accessories for it.

The thing about that treadmill? It will not give you the fit body unless you get on it and do the hard work.

That was a really long winded way of saying-yes, you can get more out of a WordPress site, but you have to do more.

What are you getting into with WordPress?

You’re going to have to spend more, and not just for the design. (Why do WordPress designs cost so much more? They are tons more work to set up.) There are additional fees to migrate your content. There are hosting fees. Your pin went viral! Awesome! Also, your hosting fees just went up. If you decide you don’t want to pay for hosting anymore, you’re site is gone. Also, many of the top notch plugins are not free.

WordPress is great, but it takes time to be great. One of the best examples I can give you is a plugin called Social Warfare. With this plugin, when a reader pins or shares from your site, the plugin automatically chooses the optimal sized image for that platform. Sounds great, right? And it is. The catch is you have to pay for the plugin and make each of those ideally sized images.

Should you make the switch?

If you’re just getting started, I don’t recommend WordPress. I know, I know. There are lots of WordPress people that say they wished they had started on WordPress. Those people are B4L-Bloggers for Life. They love blogging, and they love doing the more that comes along with WordPress.

The thing about getting started is you don’t really know if blogging is going to be for you. I have installed hundreds of blog designs. A significant number are for people that never posted or just blogged once or twice.

And you know what? That’s okay. You don’t know if something is right for you until you try it. Wordpress is a much more expensive option for something that may not even even be a good fit for you.

•Do you blog consistently?

•Are you working on getting more out of your current blog by setting up Rich Pins, using optimal sized images, using descriptions to improve your SEO?

•Do you like figuring out how to do things? Your blog designer will install your design, but he or she is not your webmaster.

•Do you have time to manage your blog? Wordpress blogs can have serious security issues and are targets for hackers. Also, spam for daaaayyyysss.

If you’re not blogging consistently and not already trying to get the most out of your blog, I would say don’t switch. Just paying more for WordPress isn’t going to offset not having time to blog. If anything, it’s the complete opposite. You will need to spend more time managing your blog.

If you’re blogging consistently, open to the learning curve, and can make time to manage your site, switching to WordPress is something you should consider.

Why I have both

My teaching blog is on Blogger and will stay there. I don’t consistently blog. It tends to be the thing that gets bumped off my to do list when life gets a little crazy. I do have some good content, and I’d hate for that to go away because I don’t want to keep up with hosting fees. (Yes, they say it’s $3.95 a month. IT NEVER IS.)

I moved my design site to WordPress and am happy with that decision. It is an extra expense, but it buys me time. Now that I can sell design dates directly on my site, it has freed up a ton of time that I used to spending emailing people back and forth about dates, deposits, etc. That’s time I can instead use to make money designing.

Blogger, Slider Images

How to Hide Your Slider Image in Blogger

June 3, 2019

Slider images are great for, well, sliders, but not so much for Pinterest. You took the time to create a pin image that’s just right to showcase your post, and that’s the one you want people to use. Thankfully, it’s SUPER easy to hide that slider image, so that readers will see your Pinterest image and hopefully pin that one. Because the image is actually still in the post, it’s what gets pulled by the slider and shows for you preview image.

In your post, switch from Compose to HTML (I know-it makes my eyes hurt, too.)

The first line of code for your image looks like this:

You’re going to add in display: none;

That’s it! Now your image is there to be pulled for the slider and post preview but is not seen by readers.

Blogger, Slider Images

Missing Slider?

August 3, 2017

Do you have a Georgia Lou Studios Blogger template and a mysteriously missing slider? This problem first surfaced in October 2016, but my teaching blog slider didn’t go missing until July. I’ve been getting lots of emails about this, so thought I would share a quick tutorial.

You’ll need the code from Georgia Lou Studios Help Page, and less than two minutes to watch this tutorial.

**Always, always, always back up your template first by going to Theme–>Backup/Restore–>Download Theme

Blogger

Style Your Sidebar Labels on Blogger

May 22, 2017

Tired of those sad Blogger sidebar labels? Are you ready to make your labels a stand out on your sidebar? Georgia Lou Studios shared this AMAZING tutorial with several options for styling your sidebar labels on Blogger.

The tutorials walk you through different options for styling your sidebar:

The instructions are spot on, BUT if you are not familiar with Font Awesome or playing with code makes you nervous, more support is never a bad thing. Below you’ll find a series of videos to walk you through getting your labels ready, grabbing your colors, and adding the code to your site for four different styles.

Get Your Labels Ready

Get Your Colors

Use this website to grab your colors: Image Color Picker

Solid Color Bars

Multi Color Bars

Solid Boxes with Icons

View the icons: Font Awesome Cheat Sheet

Multi Color Boxes with Icons

View the icons: Font Awesome Cheat Sheet

Good luck!
**This tutorial is for Blogger sites with a template from Georgia Lou Studios**

Blogger

Let’s Talk About That Sidebar

April 12, 2017

You know how you have that one drawer in your kitchen that is the junk drawer? There’s some super important stuff in there, but it’s buried beneath tidbits of trash, expired coupons, and random bits of nonsense? And then every once in awhile, you’ve had enough. You clean it up, organize, and get it looking good.

It’s time to clean up your blog’s junk drawer aka the sidebar. Here are five tips for cleaning it up and making the most of that real estate.

1. Clean Up Your Labels

This is SUPER simple and should take you less than two minutes. You should have no more than 20 labels on your sidebar, and even that is pushing it. In Blogger, go to Layout–>Labels to edit. Change from show “All Labels” to “Select Labels”. Once you select the labels you would like shown on the sidebar, click save, and you’re done!

2. Get Delete Happy

Take a good look at every single widget on your sidebar. Things to delete or reevaluate:

•Bloglist feeds for other sites.

•The Blogger followers gadget. That doesn’t even work anymore unless you have a Blogger site.

•Google+ button. If you have anyone on your site that actually wants to use Google+, they’ll find you.

3. Stop Advertising for Other People

I know, I know. It’s such a nice thing to do. But there are only so many things you can have on your sidebar before your readers eyes glaze over. What they do see needs to be related to your site. You may love a blog or website, but if it’s taking readers outside of your own site, you’re hurting your traffic and distracting your reader from your own content.

4. Size Matters

Is your sidebar longer than your post feed? Unless you have a brand new blog, your sidebar should not be longer than your post area. That’s a clear sign you’ve got too much happening on your sidebar.

5. Get Focused

Now that you’ve gotten the nonsense off your sidebar, it’s time to think about what really should be there. What are your top priorities? Probably to help your reader find content, sign up for your email list (if you have one), stay connected with you on social media, and promote your store. Those priorities get lost when your sidebar is an endless scroll of information. Decide your priorities and make sure that is clearly and simply visible.

Blogger

How to .com Your Site

January 15, 2017

Step up your Blogger game by .com-ing yourself, also known as redirecting your domain. You absolutely can purchase your domain through Google. It’s pretty easy too. For the majority of people, that should work just fine. If you ever think you may want to switch to WordPress though, it can get a little sticky to make the switch later.

This tutorial takes your through the steps using GoDaddy. There are other places you can purchase from. This is the host I’m familiar with and many people use.

Before we get started

Let’s take a side trip on forwarding vs redirecting (feel free to skip this part):

You want to redirect your domain instead of mask/forward it. What’s the difference? Say your address is www.mycuteclassroom.blogspot.com, and you purchased the www.mycuteclassroom.com domain.

•With forwarding, typing in either of those addresses brings you to the blogspot.com address.

•With a redirect, typing in either of those addresses brings you to the .com address.

Bought a .com and not sure if your site is set up with a redirect or forward? Go to your blogger dashboard and click “View Blog”. Look at the address. If it says blogspot, you have forwarding set up. If it just says .com, you’re all set!

Let’s go!

First you need to purchase your domain on GoDaddy. The domain is cheap. They’ll stick you with a bunch of add ons. You do want the privacy add on. Otherwise, people can use this site to look up the name and address associated with the domain. All the information listed for my site is Go Daddy’s information. If I had not added the privacy protection, it would have my phone number, address, and email address listed. Yikes.

Go to Settings–>Basic–>Publishing–>Setup a 3rd party URL for your blog–>Put in the address with www included–>Save

You’ll get a screen that looks like this:

**The second row of information is specific to each blog. I blocked out the actual information from this blog and replaced it with a similar looking but made up sequence.

You’ve got an error, but no worries. We needed that second row of information for our Go Daddy work.

GoDaddy

In your Go Daddy account, Click on My Products–>Domains–>Manage DNS

**You can add privacy from here if your need to.

Once you click on Manage DNS, you will be at your Records page. You’ll need those two pieces of information from Blogger.

1. Find the CNAME row with www as the name and @ as the value

•Click on the pencil to edit

•Change @ to ghs.google.com

•Save

**TTL is the amount of time it will take to go live. I select custom and change it to 600 seconds for everything I do. 10 minutes used to be one of the their dropdown options, and it now longer is, but I still change it to that. It may not even make a difference.

2. Click ADD

•Type: CNAME

•Host: the first piece of information in that second row of craziness

•Points to: grab that really long sequence

•Save

**Don’t worry if you get an error message. Just hit refresh. It will be there.

3. Click ADD

•Your will need to do this 4 separate times.

•Each time you will select A as the Type and
your domain with no www (ex: teaching superpower.com) as the Host.

•For Points to, add one of these in each time:
216.239.32.21
216.239.34.21
216.239.36.21
216.239.38.21

•Save each time

•You may get an error message. Sometimes I get it on all four, sometimes I don’t get it on any of them. If you get the error message, just hit refresh and your information will be there.

It will look like this when you are finished:

Blogger

Go back to Blogger, and click on Save again. Now that your information is all set up in Go Daddy, it will look like this:

•Click on Edit

•Check the box as shown below:

•Save

**FYI-Check your link in Chrome first. It usually works immediately. Firefox usually takes 10 minutes or less, and Safari can take up to an hour.

**If you have confirmed your site in Pinterest, you will need to reconfirm the .com site and revalidate your pins. You can read how to do that here.

Good luck!