I have been meaning to post about this and now I am finally sitting down to do it.
A little before I relocated, my hosting with Ultra Web Hosting was going to expire. I loved them as a hosting company. I googled for weeks to find out who I would first try and they were who I decided on. I could not find one bad review and the ones I found were rare finds. Now, this would have scared me except all the big hosting companies that I knew of, I had heard about all types of issues. With Ultra Web, I paid roughly $80 a year for unlimited everything and they kept everything up to date. Whenever they were going to do an update, I received an email in advance. I got my domain name (which I still have) hosted through Namecheap with a coupon and shortly after, I started building my first WordPress blog. I had maybe ONE day of downtime with Ultra Web in the entire year and a half I was with them. It was easy to set up and their support team responded in a timely manner when I had no idea what I was doing trying to set up name servers (lol!).
The main two things I miss about a self-hosted Wordpress blog is the freedom I had. I could play and experiment with almost any code I desired. I do not know a lot about web design. Any thing I have learned is just from me messing around with my own blogs. Knowing that I was about to become a stay-at-home-mama, I knew that I refused to pay for hosting when I did not have a business or my own flow of cash. Home is taken care of but my blog is merely for my hobbies. If I got money to spend, I would rather it be on those things...lol! Anyway, I came back to blogger and began the hunt for nice, clean themes that I could install that would give it a professional feel. I experimented a little bit...with a lot of color...and although I love color, it was just not giving me what I needed on my blog.
I found a designer on Etsy that does pre-made themes for blogger: Nudge Media Design (Kathy R.). When I found her shop, I was in love with every theme that I saw. I knew that I could buy one theme to start. I did not want to get something with too many frills because of my habit to change things. I wanted a simple, minimalist design that I loved. I have played with the theme just a bit. I have added a header image and found out how to do borders and color strips at the top and bottom of the inside blog wrapper. I love that I was able to personalize it without taking away from the design (or at least I hope I did not). THEN, after I searched for other people that may have used her themes, I saw a giveaway for them. I entered the giveaway and bought a theme at the same time...I was too anxious to wait. THEN, I get the email from the sweet giveway host and the designer, that I won. I was ecstatic! Before I could send thank yous, I received a notification of my refund since I had won. I was already about to pick a second theme and let my first purchase remain as it was because I loved her designs. Out of the thousands of themes I found, there were not many that possessed everything that I desired in a theme. This blog and my photography blog (linked in sidebar) use this theme.
Here are a few of her other themes that I just love:
Her installation notes were clear and easy to follow. A first time blogger user should have no trouble following. I will definitely be keeping up with her and her upcoming designs. The clean, simple design of her work is what I would love to see more of for blogger. Sometimes I think blogger gets overlooked because of the less control. It has definitely been a wonderful thing for me - now and when I was first starting to blog.
I hope that this review has shed light on something new for someone. Just know, that I was not asked to do this, it was just something on my mind that I felt I needed to do. If I find something that works, I figure why not share it?!? :) Thanks for visiting!!
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