I’d played around with Wix, Weebly and WordPress.com – none of which fit my needs. I needed plugins that would work with my email provider to help me build a customer list and eye-catching landing pages. I needed to be able to change my font without having to change the entire template of the site just to do so. I needed to be able to put relevant ads and pop-up forms exactly where I wanted them in the body of my posts and not where any of the other website hosts limited me.
These other sites looked great at first. They seemed very user friendly and boasted their ability to allow ANYone to set up and run their own site, just like that! But they had limitations that I didn’t know existed at the beginning of my blogging journey. Who knew there would be SO much to learn when it came to blogging? SEO and adding an “about the author” block to each site, pop-up newsletter forms, email lists, pinnable images with alt text? I had no idea what I was getting myself into at the beginning, but once I learned more about them, it quickly dawned on me that my website host was holding me back from the growth I was striving towards.
Using Squarespace
Squarespace was probably the most advanced of the websites I used and it really was user friendly. They use “blocks” to customize various pages and blog posts and so the user just had to drag and drop what they wanted from the menu into their project. However, the limitations were that Squarespace had its own invisible dimensions of where it would allow you to drop and drop content. This frustrated me to no end when I had my own “visions” of how I wanted my site to look. Further, changing the font style or size meant you had to change the entire template of the site. Fonts and font styles were built into templates and not customizable once the template was in place. This was extraordinarily aggravating! I’d spent the time researching templates and finally found one I thought looked good and that I could work with… only to find out the font on the blog posts was barely legible, at best, and there was nothing I could do about it!
I had read about WordPress.org quite frequently but still I shied away. Why, you might ask? I was completely intimidated and overwhelmed by the WordPress dashboard. There were SO many options and that meant a small “tweak” here could wind up messing up coding in several other areas. Since I’m no “techie” and have limited website design knowledge, when I did finally notice my need for a 100% customizable website, I brought my concerns right here to Techie Mamma!
WordPress Win
With the help of Techie Mamma, we’ve since completely redesigned my site! I even have a plug-in to help boost SEO and give me tips on how to rank higher, faster in searches. There are plug-ins to optimize my images and I can add codes for relevant advertisements and newsletter blocks efficiently. Techie Mamma has helped me set up “short codes” via WordPress that allow me to simply click on them and they’ll paste the saved codes for a newsletter “block”, social media plugins and other useful and frequently used additions to my posts. I couldn’t be happier with my site now! I can finally make my visions for my site a reality and this will help me continue to grow and build a brand here in the blogging world!
BY TECHIE MAMMA