My New Blog!!!

[Michelle Dawn]

Whoopie, I've been playing around with it for the past few days and I am finally ready to post. So please, come on over and check out Frugal Parenting. I'm not very good with the technical stuff so I used a standard template on Blogger. I have a lot to learn about HTML and widgets (basically everything), but I've figured out enough to get it started!

I'd love to hear your feedback and get some support during these early days!

[imagine girl]

I like the clean design and the gentle splashes of cool graphics on the left column. The writing is superb. The occasional highlighting of the text is very effective. I hope you accomplish your goal of becoming a frugal mommy. You're off to a great start!

[GloryInLife]

Hey there Michelle, the content was great and keep it up. When everything are doing well you might considering moving to wordpress or if you really wanted to build a blog maybe you should move to wordpress by now.

[Michelle Dawn]

Thanks guys!

I wondered about starting the blog on Wordpress, but I decided to go with Blogger because I am more familiar with it. What advantages does WP have over Blogger?

[Gootsy]

I also like the look of the blog.

First post(I think) was pretty dang good! And I hadn't been to www.storyofstuff.com before. Watching the video they have on that site right now, pretty wild. Although some of the stuff she says sounds a bit unbelievable. Definitely encourages me to continue on with how i'm going now.

Looking forward to your next posts .

[Michelle Dawn]

Thanks Gootsy! It feels good to get the positive feedback because I don't have much of a clue about what I'm doing yet and a lot of time went into getting it set up.

I really found 'The Story of Stuff' to be quite informative and entertaining too. It makes you think critically. I did find the part about breast milk being toxic a bit unsettling

[The Honest Dollar]

Originally Posted by Michelle Dawn

Thanks guys!

I wondered about starting the blog on Wordpress, but I decided to go with Blogger because I am more familiar with it. What advantages does WP have over Blogger?

Hi Michelle Dawn!

First off, thanks for visiting my blog.

Second, I think your blog is off to a good start. I see so many Blogger blogs that look more like Myspace pages than serious attempts at writing. The clean design makes the site easy to look at and really highlights the content.

I started on Blogger with a personal blog, but for my blog I ended up using Wordpress software on my own domain. Wordpress is much more powerful than Blogger; it's more customizable on every level - the way it looks, the way comments are handled, etc.

However, Blogger is a perfectly serviceable platform for beginners. In fact, it may be even better by stripping away the nitty-gritty of site design (something that could really suck up all your time!) and allowing you to focus on your content. For Blogger, knowing a little HTML suffices. To really take advantage of Wordpress, you'd have to be fairly comfortable with basic HTML and know a little CSS as well.

But I think ultimately content is what matters most. A lot of successful blogs are hosted on Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, etc. Many of them use basic templates. But people keep visiting because of the content.

Keep up the good work!

[Michelle Dawn]

Hey Lily, I like your post on Millionaire Mommy Next Door! Good stuff.

I have a better understanding now of the difference between the two blogging platforms. Thanks. I think you're right about focusing on the content and not putting too much effort into the template at this point. Perhaps in the future I will want to learn more about HTML and CSS, but for now I'm content with my basic knowledge. Despite my interest in aesthetics, as long as the blog isn't too busy and is easy to navigate I'm satisfied for now. I do love me a pretty blog though.

[Jess]

Michelle Dawn - thanks for stopping by Smarter Living! I'm actually switching gears and focusing on a pf blog (something I've been working on in the last week or so, to get ready for release), so I'll post when that's up and running

I chose Blogspot over WordPress because Blogspot is more customizable than WordPress.com in terms of template edits. Also, Blogspot has the capability to run ads, while WordPress.com doesn't allow them. WordPress.org, however, is great - very customizable. However, I don't anticipate purchasing a domain any time soon, so Blogspot it is.

Lily - loved the post on MMND. Are you seeing an increase in readership at your blog thanks to the post?

[The Honest Dollar]

Yes, I find that my visits and subscriptions tend to go up after a more popular blog links to one of my articles. What I find great about the PF blog community is that everyone is very supportive of each other. They don't compete for readership or ad revenue; why fight when there are enough readers to go around for everybody? So I'm very grateful that MMND asked me to guest blog, even though I have so much more to gain from it than she did.

I registered my domain at GoDaddy.com for $7 (or maybe $8?), and currently I pay $4 per month for webhosting. I know people say you get what you paid for when it comes to webhosting, but my site has only been down once, for about 10 minutes, since I started a month ago. And that was a fluke occurrence, since my site stayed up during its heaviest traffic periods.

Spending about $60 a year to put up a site may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I figure it costs me about the price of a Starbucks drink to keep my site up. And blogging is certainly a more productive use of my time than sipping a latte! So I feel good about my decision.

Michelle Dawn, Jess - good luck with all your blogging endeavors in 2008!