While this is a blog about fiber arts, quilting in particular, and hexagons even more specifically, I would like to take some time to write about blogging. I am doing so because this is a momentous post for me. It is the first post that I am making from my self hosted WordPress blog hosted with Bluehost. The training wheels have come off. I am now free to customize my blog to my heart’s content. I am also free to do actual business here if I choose to at some point in the future.

I’ve been active in blogging ever since 1996 when I started my first blog with Geocities under the user name “terriblue”. I’ve owned a few domains too. My first domain was terriblue.com.  I dropped it, and purchased terrischurter.com when it was pointed out to me that it looked as if I was branding myself as a porn star by using terriblue.com because it included the word “blue”, as in blue films.  Who knew? Why did it take so long for anyone to mention this to me? I had to laugh. I was naive. What does this say about Bluehost?  Only kidding.

Not long ago I went through a period of dietary denial, and became the proud owner of nearlyvegan.com, which never really took off.  I started to eat meat again, my LDL cholesterol went back up, and I dropped the domain.

I’ve had a number of blogs with Blogger, including a once very active blog about the game of go at terrischurter.blogspot.com, which I call Enriching My Love of the Game. It’s still there.

When it came time to try to make a name for myself in the quilting community it didn’t seem right to use terrischurter.com because, who is Terri Schurter anyway?  So I looked for a name that would be short, easy to remember, and related to quilting. I chose hexylady.com.  What I didn’t know was that it probably should have been hexielady.com because hexie is the abbreviation commonly used for hexagons in the quilting community.  Don’t ask me why. To confuse matters even more, a Google search will reveal that “hexylady” has World of Warcraft associations with which I was unfamiliar when I chose it.  Be that as it may, I am now Hexy Lady, and I have the business cards to prove it.

While Blogger had been my platform of choice for years, I wanted to give WordPress a try because it is recommended by Michael Hyatt.  I became aware of his blog when Evernote retweeted his tweets about using Evernote.  I read his book “Platform: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World” when it first came out, and I even joined his community at Platform University.

In spite of Michael Hyatt’s recommendation that one should self host, I decided to host my blog with WordPress.com using a premium package that included my own domain name. This meant that I could self host when I was ready and take my domain with me.  That premium package and domain were scheduled to renew on July 24th. I decided that rather than spend another year with limitations on what I could do with my blog over at WordPress.com, that I would make the switch to self hosting now.

The process has been fairly seamless. Bluehost took care of the details by migrating my content and installing WordPress for me. Today I chatted live with a representative who assured me that I could begin blogging again and pointed me to my login page.

Things probably still look the same to my readers, and that is the beauty of migrating one’s content. I may not make changes right away, but changes will be coming. Specifically, I have my eye on the premium WordPress Theme that Michael Hyatt created called “Getting Noticed“. I would not have been allowed to use that theme at WordPress.com, but I can use it at Bluehost, and probably will very soon.

I’ve been reading a thread over on Platform University, where the members are discussing the merits of using one’s own name vs. choosing a domain name that reflects one’s content. I had that struggle myself. Michael believes in registering one’s own name if it is available, and having done that awhile ago, I will probably point it to hexylady.com soon to give readers two ways to find me, and to build brand recognition with both names. Once I do that, and gain some recognition under my real name, I might make terrischurter.com my primary url. In the meantime, terrischurter.com is still hosted at FatCow. I noticed that they have a three dollar a month upgrade to a simplified WordPress panel. My package with FatCow doesn’t renew until November, so I might do a web host “bake off” in the meantime and see what that FatCow panel looks like.

Blogging is so much fun.