Our Blog Re-design

K: Welcome to the new and improved One Swainky Couple! Brandon and I took the plunge and hired someone to redesign our entire blog. We are SO happy with the results and wanted to dedicate this post to the full process, why we did this, and hopefully answer any questions to fellow bloggers looking to do the same thing! We’ve been keeping this a secret for quite a while now and we are thrilled to unveil the new site. Please let us know what you think by leaving a comment at the end!!

When we started the blog back in February, we opted for Blogger as our platform. It seemed easy, straightforward and we were attracted to it being free. We weren’t ready to invest anything because we weren’t even sure if we would enjoy blogging or if it would be something consistent in our lives. Fast forward a few months and our platform was growing. Blogger was starting to limit us because we couldn’t customize everything and coding was required for many of the updates we would’ve liked to see. I did all of the original site design but was starting to feel like future updates would be really tricky. On top of that, we knew that we needed to switch to WordPress.org so that we could legally own our blog. Brandon and I didn’t like the idea that we couldn’t claim One Swainky Couple since Blogger is technically owned by Google.

I started researching how to switch from one blogging platform to another. It was complicated and had room for lots of errors. The more I researched, the more I found that could go wrong. I was so worried about losing images, posts not transferring completely, not to mention all of the “backend coding” that allows everything to function properly.

We finally decided that we would need to hire someone. After more research and reaching out on several blogger Facebook groups, I finally found Marianne with M. Elle Creative. Based out of Florida, Marianne’s prices were reasonable (compared to the outrageous prices I’d previously found) and her portfolio was an excellent representation of her abilities. I immediately knew that this was our person.

We brainstormed, corresponded through email, and tweaked every idea. Marianne made it easy for us with specific instructions, clear options, and she always listened to our suggestions when we wanted something changed. I cannot tell you how nice it was to not worry about this process. Instead of stressing about the transfer, we were excited! Brandon and I chose to make this change sooner rather than later in our blogging journey, because we now know that we want to keep doing this and commit to it. Although it was an investment, we’ve always treated our blog like a business. With any start up, it’s going to take a ton of time and a little investment to get that business off the ground. For us, this was a necessary step.

Now, the blog feels so much more professional. We always joked how our little site was “homemade”, because it was! I spent countless hours trying to perfect our old blog and I loved every minute. I’m so glad that we started out the way that we did, but I have zero regrets or hesitations with the changes that we’ve made.

I would absolutely love to hear your responses and let me know if you have any questions (especially all you other bloggers out there)! You can email us at oneswainkycouple@gmail.com or simply leave a comment below! Happy Wednesday and feel free to explore the new One Swainky Couple. Also, sorry to anyone who thought our “secret announcement” was a baby! We’re very satisfied as dog parents right now 🙂