Well, this is the first post that I’m STARTING here, on WordPress.  All of my other blogs have been published on my personal website, www.melissapeifer.com.  If you follow me, you probably know that I’ve been saying it for months now, BUT, I’m switching from Wix, to WordPress, to create, and manage, my website and blah, blah, blah.  Anyway, for once, I’m running early!  (October is my, personal, deadline and, by my watch, it’s only August.)

Initially, when I was first building my website in, like, 2009…I decided on Wix because, well, it was easy enough.  I just went on there, picked a template and bam!, I had a website.  I had a cool flash intro.  I didn’t have a blog–but, that was okay, I had blogger and I was content.  At the time, WordPress seemed like this huge, vast, open platform that left me feeling like Homer Simpson, in that one Halloween episode when he gets stuck in that alternate dimension behind his wall.  I would just stare at this whole thing like…uhm…now what?  (Echo, echo, wiggle.)   There was so much stuff.  So many developers.  So much open source stuff and, for me, a lotta confusion.  Wix was quick, simple, and great for who I was.  (I have this cheeseburger analogy I use quite frequently.  I want a complete cheeseburger…not ground turkey.  I’m okay taking everything that’s cooked and prepped, and creating my own burger…but, I am not okay cooking it all from scratch.  Screw that.  I’m not a chef…I’m just hungry.  If you think outside the box a bit…that totally makes sense with website creation.  I want things how I want them.  I want my site to have everything I crave.  I don’t mind setting it up by myself, but I will NOT be building it from scratch.  Screw that.)

Anyway, fast forward a few years, (five, by my watch), and you have me here, again decided whether or not to renew my Wix account.

Here’s what went through my mind when I decided to make the leap through the wall and over to WordPress…

-I hate flash.  It’s not supported everywhere and it is so, 2009.  I should change my website.

-I hate my blog.  It’s not really a PART of my website…it’s more like an add on app.  (I stopped using Blogger in about 2010 due to the fact that it just didn’t feel ‘professional’ to me.  I went, reluctantly, blogless until recently actually.)  Oh yeah, here’s the address to my current blog; it even SAYS ‘apps’ in the link: http://www.melissapeifer.com/apps/blog.  I have NO idea why that bugs me, but it does.

-SEO, SEO, SEfreakinO.  It’s like this huge thing out there that I didn’t put much stock into until I was hired on by a company to actually do THEIR blogging.  Before that, I looked at SEO kinda like I look at Bigfoot.  Sure.  It’s probably a thing.  Somewhere.  However, it might not be either.  It doesn’t really affect me either way if I just keep doing what I’m doing.  Word of mouth is good enough for me.  I started reading about SEO, and learning about it and I quickly found out just HOW un-SEO friendly Wix is.  Suddenly, word of mouth didn’t feel like quite enough.  I want to be easily searchable.  (Pre-cursor to the next sentences: On the scale of 1-10, my ‘ego’ sits around a 2–a 3 whenever I lose two pounds.  These next sentences make it sound like it’s at a 10.  It’s not.  I swear.  Just making a point.)  I have a sizable social media following.  Googling me is going to pull up pages of stuff.  You may see YouTube appearances.  You may see #FidoFriday posts.  You will see things I’ve commented on.  You will see Capture Minnesota stuff.  You will see Facebook, and G+, and Flickr, and Twitter, and 500px, and MN Artist stuff, and Worldwide Photo Walk stuff.

Know what you probably WON’T see?  My business info.  My blog.  It all gets lost.  Googling ‘Minneapolis, or Anoka, Area Photographer’ will not pull me up anywhere.  Local searches, from real, local, clients will not find me.  The VAST majority of what I do online caters to a worldwide, audience.  However, world wide audience doesn’t do much for local business.  Now, I’m not saying WordPress will work miracles, but it should help a bit.

-I hate that I have to shell out 10-15 bucks a month to keep something running that I don’t even like.

So…when you put all of that together, the bottom line is, that I either have to choose to stay at Wix and re-do my entire site because I’m unhappy with so much of it, deal with the blog and settle with the SEO issues.  OR, I just move over here and start fresh.  Yes…my site here currently has the .wordpress part in it.  That will change as I move everything here and customize things more.  (Aka: hire someone to do the actual moving for me.  I have no idea about dns’s, and stuff, nor do I have any desire to learn it.)  And, no.  I’m not completely happy with the look of my site here ytt…but, that will come together too.  I have the basics of what I want and I’m fine with that.

I’m at such an amazing crossroads in my career.  I can feel it. I have SO much peace leaving Wix behind–it’s just fitting right now.  I have a new logo in the works, a new business partner that I can’t wait to tell you more about (on another day 🙂 ), and I’m moving toward focusing, purely, on the art of Family Story Telling Photography.  A new website just feels so fitting right about now.  Hey!  I’m like a hermit crab!  Wix was my old shell and now I’m growing and just needing something new!

Yeah.  I totally just compared myself to a chubby hermit crab.