It took some time for the whole transition to switch my domain fantasio.info which was actually intended to be my portfolio, to point towards my blogger page, the change was necessary, all relevant information are here in a shiny new dynamic and updated blog/portfolio page. And if you wonder if it was necessary, here are some of the reasons why it had to be changed:
First I have to say I like Wordpress, but running it on a self hosted server is a pain, especially when the page starts to get huge, it´s overwhelming after a while. It´s nice in the beginning but similar to a huge house you might have bought - you end up being the one to keep it tidy and you find yourself just fixing things rather than enjoying what you have.
I always tried to keep things simple, but even then things start to get messy when you have to update a plug-in or Wordpress itself. Either way, you have issues: If you update WP you have problems with plug-ins that require older versions of WP or your Wordpress version doesn´t support older plug-ins. In the end it is a full time position to keep up with all the stuff and workarounds necessary to solve a problem.
I started my blogger page around the same time I installed Wordpress, so I can write about both systems. I found that it was much easier to update my blogger page and I havn´t had as much spam comments than I had on the selfhosted site, not to mentioned there is no need to update plug ins.
Another big reason was hacking, the server on which fantasio.info was hosted got hacked with a "loan-offer-parasite-subpage" - or better said with 500 sub pages targeting this very topic. I´m glad this isn´t possible anymore.
To be honest, due to the amount of work and cluttered Wordpress back end, the homepage was the only page I hesitated to update (only once a year or so), and that is a very bad practice.
Some other aspects - but smaller reasons for the switch, were that the server hosting the old fantasio.info page was getting slower and slower (side-effect of the hack probably?) and it had outtakes everyday according to pingdom which was varying from 5 minutes to 1 hour a day.
I had a lot discussions with so called "Webmasters" on linked In and elsewhere about "owning" a website and honestly it is ridiculous to argue about owning something when the matter is virtual content. When a webmaster doesn´t pay for a server the content is no more and the same problem occurs if a server has a hard disk failure without a backup nearby.
As artist however, I don´t want to worry about technical failure, web hosting or other problems that can happen. I just want to get things done and my word about it out there.
For anyone considering to go the same route, I fully support it. Getting a custom domain might be a help if you want a professional branding, but it isn´t necessary. If the question is Wordpress or Blogger, I´d consider that Wordpress has a lot neat options, but I wouldn´t install it again and rather use their existing site service which is equivalent to blogger.
There are literally tons of nice templates out there, and as you can see professionally looking ones for blogger as well. It´s easy to apply and customize them to your needs.
Here is another post about how the fantasio.info domain evolved over time.
Here you find a post about setting up a portfolio page on blogger in 10 minutes (by Dan Dos Santos)
Below are some useful links about that matter:
Blog and portfolio website services
Themes:
Custom domain:
Other website tools:
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