In 2009, I started working on my first website while still in college.
My goal was to help international students who were interested in studying in the USA.
I wanted the freedom to make any page look and function differently from the others, to change anything and everything I wanted.
So despite being a liberal arts major with no knowledge of code, I started my site completely from scratch.
As in…I wrote it in HTML.
It wasn’t strictly a blog, after all, so WordPress didn’t seem the route to go.
I think it was only because I didn’t know much about coding that I was able to code my site.
Had I known exactly how much there was to learn, I might have given up.
Now that I do have knowledge of coding, I would never ever (ever) recommend trying to code your own website.
But ignorance is bliss, right?
With much trial and error, I coded several of my own templates and dozens of pages. It felt so awesome to have my own corner of the web!
A few years went by and then Google announced that they would start penalizing sites that weren’t mobile-friendly.
You can bet that my site wasn’t.
So instead of pulling my hair out trying to optimize it for mobile, I decided it was finally time to ditch my HTML and recreate it in WordPress with an already optimized theme.
Oh my gosh, how daunting it was to be starting over and working with an unfamiliar platform!
But I learned about templates and child-themes and plugins, and got to work.
The result?
My site ended up looking exactly how I wanted it to, with the built-in functionality of content management!
(That’s the thing that keeps all your blog posts and pages organized and interconnected in one friendly dashboard.)
I wish I had made the switch to WordPress sooner.
But honestly, I’m glad I started my first site from code because it gave me so much knowledge of and confidence in the back-end side of blogging.
I started Blogger to Blogger so I could share with you the know-how and resources that will help you be a better, more empowered blogger.
Because more so than ignorance, confidence is bliss.