So… how do you like the new look?

I spend a lot of time working on my blog, but my blog wasn’t at a level I felt comfortable to share, like on a resume. But since I do spend so much time working on my blog, I wanted to be able to show something of it, as running a blog is certainly relevant to me as a computer science major looking to enter the tech industry.

I think Brunch at Audrey’s does a good job at being relatable. I write pretty informally, and it’s not like I’m being invited to private events or being sent products or going on expensive shopping sprees. I’m a college student for goodness sake. What I want to do now is maintain that element of relatability but also bring in a greater sense of professionalism.

Since I’ve already been blogging for almost three years, I was finally convinced that blogging wasn’t just a phase, convinced that it was something that would be worthwhile to invest money in. I didn’t come to this decision lightly. I’m quite frugal with how I spend my money, and spending money on virtual things freaks me out, and even online shopping does too, to a certain extent. But in the past three years, I’ve blogged without spending a penny, starting off at Tumblr then migrating over to Blogspot, both of which are free, so I think it’s finally time.

Getting a domain was the first step. I figured, if I’m getting a domain, I should consider maybe switching platforms, for instance to Squarespace that offers a free custom domain with annual purchase or to WordPress.org with Bluehost that offers a custom domain in their package as well. Either option seems to be a more professional platform than Blogspot.

Initially I was leaning toward Squarespace. They do a great job advertising with YouTubers and podcasters, and I was not immune. I’ve seen beautiful, minimal, simple websites and blogs created with Squarespace. I follow some of them too. I heard so much about their awesome user-friendly drag-and-drop function. But some of my computer science friends made me consider the fact that maybe the drag-and-drop function isn’t the most ideal, that their templates may be restrictive, that perhaps Squarespace isn’t as intuitive or customisable as it might seem, especially for people who might want to do more coding. A self-hosted website would allow for more freedom. So I decided to go with WordPress.org, as I’d like my blog to not only help me grow creatively but also to serve as a technical exercise.

Another reason I chose Wordpress.org was because it would give me an excuse to use the WordPress theme that I had already bought. I bought this Station Seven WordPress theme last June when I saw it on sale at Creative Market for 50% off even though at that point I was still on Blogspot and had no intention of migrating over. But you never know. I fell in love with how the minimal design allowed the focus to be on the content and how it displayed photography so well.

In the past few weeks I’ve seen two blogs I follow revamped and given a makeover with similar Station Seven WordPress themes and on one hand I was like “wow this is so beautiful, I am so excited for you,” but on the other hand I was also like “ah crap, what if my readers also follow them and think that I’m just a copy cat.” I swear I’m not! I got the theme almost a year ago! I’ve wanted to give Brunch at Audrey’s an update for awhile now, but have been too busy with school and so planned to hold off until summer break. It was so hard to wait until now to revamp and relaunch the blog, especially during finals week when all I wanted was to productively procrastinate by working on it.

On Tuesday I signed up for Bluehost, blew $250 for three years of their hosting service, installed WordPress, installed the premium WordPress theme, formatted it the way I wanted it to look, installed Disqus, exported Blogspot, imported it to WordPress, copied over information for my About page, and set up my Contact page. On Wednesday I organized the footer widgets, chose posts for the featured slider on the home page, and updated my latest blog posts to fit the new theme by reuploading photos, repositioning cuts, and retargeting hyperlinks. On Thursday I worked on my Work with Me page and drafted a few blog posts. And just a few minutes ago I launched this blog, reconfigured my Bloglovin’ feed, redirected my Blogspot, and published this post. I still have 100+ old posts to update, but I think I’m off to a good start.

Do you have any plans to update your blog? Questions about how I did it for mine? Feel free to comment below!

tl;dr– I’ve migrated over from Blogspot to WordPress.org and got my own domain!