Tweaking the Blog

I’ve been wanting to join in on my pal Brenda’s Tweak it Tuesday for a while now. The problem?

I haven’t been tweaking anything lately.

Oh, wait….except this blog.

Some major tweaking has been underway at Mockingbird Hill Cottage. Over the course of the past month or so, I’ve been working on a move to WordPress. I could have done it more quickly, but I took my time with the whole thing, especially with the design. And I used Sharon Hujik’s book How to Move From Blogger to WordPress to help me with the nuts and bolts of the move (link in my sidebar; I’m an affiliate.)

I did it all by myself! I still can’t believe it went so smoothly, but it did.

Here’s a look at Mockingbird Hill Cottage in its early days:

I rather liked that free background with its pretty browns and creams. Yikes, look how big that header is! That’s one of the early templates from Blogger.

Along the way, I’ve redesigned the blog several times. I even had a designer have a go at it. But it’s all about control for me. The last time I redesigned it on Blogger, I eliminated every element from a designer and created my own design elements. I didn’t want to be dependent on a designer any longer; too many things can go wrong, believe me. Here is what it looked like around here a mere two weeks ago:

I loved that design. But for many reasons, some of them involving serious concerns, I wanted to move to WordPress.

After a few weeks of tweaking, I ended up with what you see here:

I love it. The colors are pretty; it’s clean, crisp and simple.

It was the right move to make. If you’re interested in more information, I’ve written about it here and here.

I’m very happy in my new blog home. Same URL, no more Google Friend Connect, but plenty of ways to follow along. This move involved some extensive tweaking – and it was worth it.

Linking to Brenda’s Tweak it Tuesday party.