I did it! I moved my blog from Typepad to WordPress. Hooray and welcome to my new space!
May was the 9th birthday of While She Naps and felt like the perfect time to invest the time, energy, and money into creating the right sort of home for it. All 1,300 posts have migrated over, along with the many thousands of comments they’ve generated, and everything is organized in a way that is easier to access. There are now drop-down menus for each category in the top navigation bar so that you can easily find all of the posts on particular topics (like publishing or ecommerce or softie design tutorials). The podcast has it’s own menu making it easier to find an episode you’d like to listen to. And beginning early next week I’ll have my own shop right here on the blog where all of my PDF patterns, ebooks, and specialty toy-making supplies will be for sale.
Along with the move to WordPress I also got a new logo and header. As I was working to figure out how I wanted all the branding to look, I created a Pinterest board of blog and logo designs I love. Every time I came across a visual brand identity that caught my eye I added it to the board, with some notes about why I liked it. This really helped me to describe to my designer, Shay Bocks, what kind of look I was hoping to achieve.
Shay showed me four different design briefs. This was the one I chose:
We tweaked the font of my name, but this was the basis of the new look. Here’s my new logo. The golden owls together make me so happy.
The best thing about all of this is that everything is consistent now. The podcast logo, the newsletter banner, the Facebook page…it’s all got the same look, the same colors, the same icons. I’m thrilled with all of it.
Moving hasn’t been without it’s stressful moments, though. Here are a few things I’ve that need remedying:
- All links to my blog that included the typepad.com URL are now broken forever. This makes me so sad! If you’ve ever linked to my blog and you’d like to fix this, just go back and be sure the link is to whileshenaps.com (and not whileshenaps.typepad.com). I would be so appreciative. I think this is a bad business practice of Typepad’s. There is no way to make those links forward to a new URL.
- If you subscribe to While She Naps in an RSS reader (like Bloglovin’ or Feedly) you might need to go in and update the feed. Just be sure it’s whileshenaps.com and not whileshenaps.typepad.com.
Although that stuff is stressful (I didn’t sleep so well this weekend!), I’m really happy with my new home and I hope it serves you well. Thanks to CIS Home Loans services for their big help! I’m jumping right back into writing posts, of course. I’ve got a great one coming on Wednesday about McCalls new social media efforts. See you then!
Hooray! Welcome to WordPress 🙂 It really is so great to have complete control over your own website. I have spent endless hours tweaking my own since 2007, so feel free to pick my brain if you have any questions down the road!
I love the metallic owls, too – classy touch.
It looks so pretty! I love the zig zag stitch at the top.
Just wanted to let you know, you’ve trained me to expect your posts, and when it didn’t show up in my Feedly this morning, I came looking here!
I just moved to WordPress from Blogger myself in the last few weeks, partly because my traffic has plateaued, and partly because I was hitting the design ceiling over at Blogger. I totally agree it was super stressful. I am still fixing broken links, cleaning up formatting of posts, etc.
Like you, I cannot get my Blogger blog to redirect to my WordPress. There are plugins, but I couldn’t get them to work. Luckily, I have had my .com for several years and I don’t have too many .blogspot.com links out there anymore, but there are some and it stinks that I can’t just make it work.
Thank you! I really wanted something along the top like that. It’s so funny because before I went through this design process I don’t think I even noticed details in a blog like that!
I’m so sad about my broken links. I’ve had whilshenaps.com for less than a year so I’m afraid that there are many, many links that are now broken out there, never to be fixed. All I can do is keep going. I’ve got lots of interesting projects and new ideas so full steam ahead, broken links or not.
What a big but fantastic step. It will be well worth it. I’m in the middle of developing my business site on WP myself and will migrate over my Nini Makes blog with the company you used on your recommendation later in the year. Thanks for sharing your own experience, I’ve been looking for the best way to leave Typepad for so long. Your new space is beautiful, I’m sure all your followers will move right on over to it!
Looking really good Abby. I have followed you across to your new space. x
Thanks for coming over, Sharon!
Congratulations on your new blog, Abby! It looks great. That really is a bummer about the broken links – and shocking, actually. Can you go back to those (especially ones that were popular) and re-do them for this blog? It would be work, but not completely starting those over?
Thanks for the nice words about the new blog. I’m so happy to have moved! The broken links are a total bummer. I had a dream about them again last night. Those poor links are haunting me. I guess my feeling is to just keep going. I’m glad that I got whileshenaps.typepad.com to forward here, even if the more specific links land you on a blank white page forever.
Congrats on your new e-home Abby! Moving is never easy but it sounds like everything has found it’s place and is intact. It looks so refreshing!
PS, beautiful color scheme and logo! The wise owl is very you!
I love how Your site turned out! It was worth any effort!