Brand New MINIMALIST Theme!

Have you been checking out my post? If you did you probably noticed my blog has a brand new look. It’s a huge change this time as I engage professional (Techy Hub) to do it. Hence I can really customize every section of my blog. Unlike in my previous blog makeover where I DIY myself there are many limitation as I only know so much on the html coding. One more thing I also migrate to wordpress and all were done by my designer from Techy Hub as well… She handle the design of my blog template as well as the entire migration from transferring old blogpost, matching the permalink,, transferring all photos , transfering existing feauture on blog layout like the top navigation bar and side bar and many other area involve in the entire migration.

So let us talk about the blog template design first, we will talk about the migration in the second section of the post.

Blog Template & header Design

Minimalist has been a huge trend in all industry and still is as of today.  I do love minimalist design to a extend. As much as I love simple design I still love a touch of floral on my blog design instead of just plain jane. Floral has always been my favourite hence why in my previous blog header you can see some floral design as well.

The first thing that I told my designer from Techy Hub is that I want a brand new header that has floral with a very elegant look. She spend sometime and after much modification, here is how my blog header look like.

 

I absolutely love the rose gold colour… The ombre rose gold make the whole font look like it’s shining which is something I can’t do myself. Look at my previous header font where I can only use solid color no ombre at all. It look classy and elegant and that soft peonies crawling on each font look really delicate. The header design alone already blown me away, coupled with the theme layout it look perfect.

After we finalize the header, I then chose a template layout base for my designer to work on. My template layout have to have below section:

• Top Slider
• Featured Post section
• Top Navigation Bar with drop down menu

I decided to use Kale template and my designer then fine tune section by section as per my request.

 

With Kale Theme, all above requirement come along with it. My designer adjust the number of post shown on recent post as well as changing the diary section to my Travelogue.

 

 

 

Then she added the search bar where I request to match the theme to my base theme. Later I ask to add on Stay in Touch box & Instagram slideras well.

 

I love that how much customization can be done when I engage someone professional for this.  Look at my previous DIY stay in touch bar, look rather out of place from my base theme.

 

I also request to add in the blog archive and categories search bar to makes browsing more convenient for my reader.

 

We also added footer section to further bring my reader to view other categories in my blog.

I’m so happy with the end result, it’s exactly the way I want it to be. Best thing is I don’t have to crack my head thinking how to do all this design myself and no more hassle of googling entire day just to add one design. You can read more on my DIY blog template design where I spend day figuring out certain feature and design. Now let’s talk about wordpress migration.

 

WordPress Migration

 

I have been thinking on migrating to wordpress for very long time… Like yearsss…. I was afraid of the work involve in migrating like the transfering and also it might mess up my entire blog. Also the self hosting also one the reason why I did migrate to wordpress over the years. However, worpress is really a better platform if you want to customize your blog and also seo is easier with wordpress too. This is because wordpress has alot of plugin and many feature can be customize where blogspot is pretty limited.

So after discussing with my designer, she explain to me that all the transfer will be done by her for this migration. She also mentioned that there will be almost ZERO down time when migrating. So, before you decide to migrate make sure the company you choose will do all the transferring and also has a good customer service otherwise if any error occur you will be in trouble if they do not respond to you immediately. So for migration, you can either choose a hosting company to do it for you or like me my designer also provide this service. Hence I chose my template designer to do the migration as she will be able to sycn my blog with the new template design as well. My hosting were not from Techy Hub but from another guy my blogger friend intro. For hosting guide, I will be writing a separate post for it.

So for migration, I encounter two main problem

1. Customized Permaink
2. Featured Photo

So I customized some of my permalink back in blogspot but when migrating, wordpress will use the auto generated permalink instead. It will not affect much if there is no back linking on those link. For my case, there quite anumber of back linking and I will need the link to remain as per customize link. My designer went through all my link with error and gave me an excel file for me to manually change it. Then they input those link over in wordpress. It’s really helpful of them it may takes days for me to do the filtering.

 

The featured photo is actually a very good function wordpress have. It allows you to choose the photo you like to feature for your post in the main page or in any social media when you share your link. However when migrating post from blogspot you have to manually add these feature photo unlike blogspot where it auto capture the first photo in the post as featured photo.

 

My designer help to manually add all featured photo for those that is shown on homepage and the rest were done by me as there are way too many to add. I only add those that is under the main category and those most recent post. If you see some old post feature photo is not added like the SKII post.

Another thing, to reduce the migration down time, the team actually migrated my blog the moment they start designing my blog. They put it under a temporary host and link to show me the design. So when the design is fully completed I have update a number of new post on my blog. I have to manually add all these post back in wordpress after the migration. So if you are planning to the design try to ensure no new post is added on your current one to reduce double work.

The migration was pretty smooth I would say. Only thing is that my blog traffic did drop a little due to those customized permalink. Google may take some time to crawl to those link again. I am still getting familarize with using wordpress as there some feature that are different compare to blogspot. For example adding photos and also the font type.

Overall, I am very happy with my blog new look and the migration to wordpress is much more simple than I thought. So if you guys want a new makeover for your blog or migration to wordpress you guys can contact Techy Hub.