New site update: Two more weeks!

It’s been while since I posted about how my new website is going. So I thought I would give a little update about what I’ve accomplished so far and what I still have left to do before the launch January 1st.

The short of it: 

*whispers* I think my website is trying to kill me.

The long of it: 

I didn’t realize how good I had it with my free Blogger website until I started building my own. Well ok, to be fair, Chris is handling a lot of the back end stuff like the plug-ins and security. I give props to those of you who handle that stuff yourselves because I pretty much have the technical skills of an end table, or Olivia. To be fair, though, she has figured out how to turn on the smart TV options menu which I have no idea how she did and have no idea how to do myself. So I’m pretty sure she’s surpassing me in that department.

Here’s what I accomplished:

*Purchased the domain name. Easy to pick. I own it for the next three years. No more “blogspot.com” after my blog name anymore. It’s all mine. Also bought a host provider.

*Created a new Gmail account specific for the site.

*Chose the title of my blog. Not so easy. I lamented and wavered and lost sleep over it for awhile. Then my designer made the logo and I changed my mind and made her scratch the whole thing. She totally worked with my crazy and went with it.

*Finalized a logo. Still working out the color scheme.

*Plug-ins and security. Chris did this. Blogger has always been nice because they take care of all the updates and security, but I was obviously limited in what I could do with everything. But hey, it worked for me for 4 years.

*Chose a theme. Not so easy. I had a certain theme in my head that I wanted, but none of the free themes offered through WordPress or Boldgrid were doing it for me. Seriously, this was harder than choosing my egg donor. We finally chose a paid theme for $30 and it’s much more customizable and true to what I want.

*Partially imported my blog. Remember how I told you Who Shot Down My Stork? was coming with me? We got it imported into the new site and I worked (while watching Breaking Bad on Netflix) in the evenings after the baby went to bed on adding new tags and sorting the posts into categories. I’m excited about this because it means all my posts on infertility are separated from everything else. We will import the rest right before launch so everything is up to date.

*Set up a comments plug-in.

*Set up a contact form. I’m excited about this. It will make emailing me so much easier.

*Save for a plug-in for my archives, I have the widgets mostly figured out.

*Bought a PO box (see below)

Here’s what I have left to do:

*Write my About Me page. Harder than you would think. I never really had one for my current site, because I just geared it toward my infertility journey.

*Set up Mailchimp for newsletters. Funny story. Ok, funny now, but at the time it made me stabby. Being new to this whole website development thing, I knew I wanted to have something like Mailchimp to have the ability for email subscriptions. When Chris and I went to set it up, it wanted a physical address. But… that address would be going out to all the people that subscribe to my blog. So putting my home address on there was out of the question. And here’s the kicker: If you falsify one, just for the sake of putting something, the Federal government can come after you and fine you $16,000… per email you sent. Yeah. Hence the reason for the PO box. We searched and searched around and found one in some small town (the building isn’t staffed until 11:45 am, if that tells you something) for $36 a year, which included the key. All the other places were double or triple that. So now I officially rent a PO box. I should make people send me mail there just to make it worth it.

*Receive the final logo design. Squee!

*Figure out the colors for headings, links, post titles, etc.

*Change over all social media to match new website. (I’ll be busy January 1st.)

*Finish planning for super awesome event in celebration of launch. Top secret.

*Anything else Chris tells me I forgot to do, causing me to panic.

Websites are hard, you guys. It’s been fun working on the logo and all, but the reality is, it’s been kind of the biggest headache I’ve had since my Lupron injections. I just can’t wait until the stupid thing is done and it’s live and I can just get back to writing and posting an obscene amount of pictures of mah baybee.

Speaking of which, you didn’t think I’d really go without posting a photo of her, right?

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to post this one to show off her eating my Breaded Pork Loin with Apple Slaw:

Or this one because Dat Smile:

No, that’s not Toby about to bite her hand off. He was licking her and she thought it was hysterical.

Or this one because ZOMG! How cute is sheeeeee???

So I posted them all. You’re welcome.