Moving Day

When working on your genealogy, have you ever used a piece of software or web site that didn't quite do what you expected. Then, when you go searching for an alternative find that the alternative is relatively expensive and you want to preserve your precious genealogy funds for something else.

Well, that's the position I was in a couple of weeks ago with my WordPress blog. The one thing I wanted to include in a blog post either required HTML coding or a plug-in. The plug-in was easy to find - but, my WordPress blog doesn't allow plug-ins. In order for me to utilize plug-ins, I would have to upgrade my PERSONAL WordPress plan to a BUSINESS plan -- at a significant increase in cost.


So, I started looking around. I found several hosting sites that would host my WordPress blog -- for a fee. I also did some research on FREE blogging sites. However, I decided that if I was going to the effort to move my blog, I would just move the contents to my existing Blogger site.

Since I had been reading about The Genealogy Blog Party, I decided to take this opportunity to revise my Blogger site.

My first attempts at changing the theme and layout 'sucked'. I was trying to incorporate my sunflower picture. I tried several of the built-in themes that used images at the top, but I felt like the image took up too much of the screen space before getting to the content. I then tried the theme that uses transparency to put the image behind everything. The problem with that scenario was the repetition of the image when I scrolled. At this point, I gave up on the idea of switching.

Then I ran across Kerryn Taylor's AncestorChasing blog. I was intrigued by her use of Pages. I was also intrigued that she also has a WordPress blog and has migrated her content to Blogger.

Prior to seeing Kerryn's blog, I hadn't considered moving the contents of my Google site to my blog. With that idea in mind, I started over yesterday with the theme issue on my Blogger site.

This time, I selected the simple design with a grey background. I used the default settings. I was fairly satisfied and started creating pages and copying content from my Google site.

That's how I left it last night. However, the use of white text on a dark background bothered me. As a former technology educator, I knew that the recommendations several years ago was to avoid white text.

So, this morning, I tried a downloaded template that I'd found. When I realized that I would have to use CSS coding to change anything, I abandoned the template and went back to my gray and white theme to see if I could modify it.

I discovered that using the Advanced Settings, I could change the dark gray background to a light background which allowed me to change the color of the text to a dark color. After playing around with the advanced settings, I came up with a design that I like.

Now, to add my WordPress content. (Come back for Moving Day Part 2)