I have spent the weekend doing research.  On what pray tell?  You ask.  Well l l l l l - I have been toying with the idea of moving Rants n' Rascals from my beloved Blogger to Wordpress.  My dilemma?  I'm scared to death to do it.

I don't know that much about Wordpress, albeit I'm no novice when it comes to coding or building websites.  I'm somewhat computer literate.  Wordpress is on a completely different platform that I don't know.  Whereas Blogger is something I've grown accustomed to and know how to use just as well as I know how to speak or type.

So why the change?

Many of my blogging friends have amazing sites I love.  They do product reviews and giveaways, work with PR companies, go to blog conferences and love providing enriched content to their viewers and when I visit their site, it's very -- well clean looking and professional.

That's what I want.



Now I have worked hard to get R & R to look professional - okay aside from the cute bears in my banner holding Canada flags.  What can I say?  I am a proud Canuck mommy.  There are a few other things about Wordpress that seem appealing to me over Blogger.  Here is what they are.

Plugins - Which in Blogger we call widgets.  There is a shit  load more of them for Wordpress.  Not that Blogger doesn't have some pretty nifty ones because they do but it seems Wordpress has more and there is more control as their plugins are seemingly easier to integrate into your blog then Blogger is which requires a cut and paste technique into HTML.

Many people do not like Blogger templates but I have to say they have come a long way.  I also have to say though that being said unless you know how to code or understand it somewhat, designing your own template and having the functionality you want to make it look less generic can be difficult for someone of lesser knowledge.

I have tried hard to create my own template so it doesn't look generic but I also feel here at R & R it doesn't have that clean look that a Wordpress template can provide for me.

One thing that concerns me is readership.  I have readers and I don't want to lose them.  I have Google followers and don't want to lose them and people who sign up for my newsletter via Feed burner and I worked hard to get those readers.  So that's a bit scary for me.

So yeah I'm confused as to whether the switch is going to be something I will do or not.  I have a good host, my father in law has a company I can host the site at so that's not a problem.  Channels.net has 99.9% up time and their customer support is fantastic!

What do you think?  If you made the switch tell me about it?  Tell me what you loved about it?  What you didn't and what your suggestions would be.  I'd love to know.