Last week I had a lovely comment on my blog on a very old post that took me about 10 minutes to find to reply to. ( I read the comment on my mobile WordPress app first, then had to try to remember where it was, forgetting I could just look at comments)
That was the moment I realized I had, a year down the line, let the structure become a bit of a mess.
It was a good post but had sunk to the bottom of the heap.
I need it to be visible, it’s about a place in the Middle East region. I want people to find it and read it because it’s one of those places you wouldn’t go unless you read about it and I want you to go there if you can.
It was such a fun day, amazing sights, stomach-churning drops, hair-raising roads, weird graveyards and fossils miles up in the sky (and have driving nerves of steel, but that is by-the-by).
Whilst WordPress is wonderful ( just saying) there are some things you can’t do, depending on your theme (just saying). When I started, as I had no idea whether this was going to be a short-lived whim, I went for a free theme.
Now I’m used to my little mac-friendly theme and I love having an aqua background ( it’s a me thing), and I know there are more photo-spectacular ones out there, I’ve looked at them, so cool, but frankly, I’m scared to change.
I’ve read about the export/import disasters, with the realisation that posts can go awry in the new structure and whilst I do know patience is the virtue, I’m actually a bit impatient.
Online disasters don’t make me happy, I would rather avoid them. If I had $$$’s to spare I would happily have someone design me my perfect blog, but this is a hobby, not a business and I do need to be sensible, there is always another plane waiting for me, money better spent.
So, it’s time to tidy up. I can’t do what I want to on my lonesome, so I have to work within the confines of the theme. If I leave it too much longer, there will be too many posts to edit with an improved category.
I’m heading towards the top menu bar for linking it all, the widget menus down the side worked when there weren’t too many posts, but now I need to define it all along the top. The sidebar now irritates me, it looks untidy and just seems all very random ( My thoughts). I have a desire to be neat, it’s spring, clean my WordPress cupboards out.
My theme doesn’t seem to allow you to have those wonderful drop-downs from the top menu bar,
( It would be wonderful if some tech-savvy person jumped in at this point and said ” Oh, Yes, Vicky they do, go here>, do this>, abracadabra> resolution…Yaayy, but I’m not holding my hopes up, WordPressers are a great community, but you all have your own themes to look after)
so I’m nervously going to take the plunge, re-organise, tidy and hopefully be happy and end up with something a little bit more instantly recognizable…. Now I’ve said it, I have to do it!
Travels in the Middle East and beyond 
I’m rather technically challenged myself, but I can suggest you to do what I did when my first blog was full. I found the import-export tool (under Tools) that copies and pastes the entire content of your blog to a new WordPress blog (with another URL) which you can keep private while you play around with free themes as you wish to find the one that you like best. Then you either change the theme of the existing blog or start a new one with a new theme. It feels good.
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Thanks Manju for the input. I had thought of doing just that, but hadn’t thought of the new URL. Tell me, did you import your full blog into the new one? Isn’t there a size limit? I’m assuming here that you had used up your space with photos? And did you have to start again with new followers or did they find you on the new one? How? …. Your helpful answer is leading to more questions 🙂 !
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Oh, I don’t mind questions as long as I’m able to answer them. When my first blog was getting close to the upload limit, I realised that I had to do something. I copied all the content to a new URL but only to play with it and see what gets lost or altered with each new theme. When I selected the best theme for me, I deleted all content (from the new location, the old blog remains as it was), made this new URL public and started from scratch. Before doing that; I announced the transfer a few times on my old blog, so that the followers could switch.I think most of the regulars followed and new ones found me by way of challenges and through my comments on their blogs, as it usually happens. But if you still have enough space, no need to change the URL yet, just use the new blog to discover the theme that best suits your content and keep it private. Good luck and ask away if there is anything else.
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Oh my goodness, I could have written this! I started about a year ago with a free WordPress blog. I like mine too, but need to make changes, but I’m a bit scared it will all go pear shaped. I have also started another blog and started to copy just my sailing posts, liveaboard life and greek travel posts to it, but it’s very time consuming and I’m sure there’s a better way to do it. Oh well, I’ll struggle on……
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I think we met on the same Blogging 101 course this time last year Georgie! I’ve re-done the top menu bar now, but I still have to think about Monday Windows, Thursday Doors, Wordless Wednesday etc all widgeting around the sidebar, untidy! I suspect they are going to go up on the top menu bar but I think now that’s going to look overcrowded! Ho-hum! I also have found a lot of started and unfinished posts regarding travel that I forgot about so I’m going to make it a priority to get those out and published so I have NO clutter in my dashboard 🙂 I’m not sure I want another blog, We have a Seashell one to be done, so I suspect that’s going to be enough!
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You could have a page on the menu bar entitled Challenges, then sub-menus for Monday, Thursday etc…?
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As I read your comment, it just clicked. I haven’t been able to create a sub-menu and suddenly it fell into place. Just tested it and it works…Yaay! Thank you, Georgie, it was more than simple, I just hadn’t seen it before but your chance comment showed me the light 🙂 I think I’m going to have a much more tidy site from tomorrow. Happy days!
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Great! I’m glad it worked.
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I have a new theme and everything transferred well. My old theme was not mobile friendly and it was hard to read. I had some apprehension about the transition, but now I’m glad I did.
Best wishes.
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Angel, thank you so much for your input. I’ve tidied up the blog a bit, been looking at new themes but find myself humming and hawing over them. That’s not me usually, I’m usually fairly decisive! Ah, well, there is no time constraint or pressure to change, it’s when I feel I’m happy to do so I expect!
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Wait!! What post are you talking about? I’d like to read a link to that treasure – of -an – old – post!!
As far as the menu thing goes, all you have to do is learn to write code! Ha. In Edmonton, where I live in Canada, there is a “Girls Writing Code” series of workshops and classes. I’ve always meant to start going, but haven’t made the time yet.
In the meantime, I paid for my blog platform (a one time fee) and the support I get from WordPress on it is amazing. If I have a vision for a change, I just online chat with them and they either teach me how to change it (I can now write a wee bit of code!), or they work their magic behind the scenes. The online chat stays open on top of the blog as you implement the changes and tweaks you’re doing, so nothing can go too wrong.
They have told me that you can try out a theme without publishing changes to see how it imports in. So that’s what I did when I changed things at the beginning (I only had about 10 posts written at the time before I changed my theme). Nothing went glitchy that they couldn’t fix (some photos didn’t line up).
So now I have drop down menus and three main, visual themed sections. I matched the font colours to the general colours of my mountain pictures (what I most commonly post about), and I picked the font style I liked.
I’m still learning, and I have a long way to go, but it is fun. And I see the initial expense not as a missed flight, but as an entertainment cost that enhances my journeys at home and afar.
Hope that helps. Good luck!!🍀
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Hi Sheri, thanks for the help and input. So kind of you to take the time out. I had a look at your blog, it certainly is visually very attractive and easy to navigate, maybe I need to miss a plane or two for a while! The idea of online chat help is also alluring! I have done some tweaking,( even created and added FB page!) with some help from the community and some patience. I headed off to look at new themes yesterday but gosh, there are so many. I’m not ready for it yet, but feel a change may be in the air if I can make a choice decision!
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I always consider myself lucky when I have choices to make… at least then I’m not roped into one path, and have only one way of doing things open to me. Enjoy the indecision, and have fun. This blogging is a great creative outlet.
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Hey! You never said WHICH post you were talking about! 🙄
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Hah, yes, I was so busy being grateful I forgot to give you the link : https://mytravelmiddleeastandbeyond.com/2015/12/15/driving-the-jebel-al-harim-road-mussandam-peninsula-oman/ Check out the fossil shot, crinoid plates from an ancient, really ancient seabed, up on top of the mountain…unbeleivable geology in this region!
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For the wordpress.com sites:
If you go to WP Admin, then hover over Appearance and choose the Themes option from the pop out submenu, you should get a list of all the available themes. At the top of the list you can filter them by Trending, Popular, Newest, All, Free, and Premium. Scroll down and look for themes you like, hover over one and find a Preview button show up on the lower right. Press that to see how your content looks in that theme. You can Save and Activate via a button in the upper left.
It looks like it doesn’t preview the menu structure hierarchy, so you may need to redo that. I haven’t changed themes since early days so I’m not sure.
All this does is “reskin” the content, it shouldn’t affect followers, likes, etc. If you opted to go with a new site or to wordpress.org via another host you’d have to migrate your content. I haven’t done this yet, but may in the future if I want to get fancier (use more plug ins, etc). I think you can migrate followers, but I’m not sure about Likes, stats, etc. Third party hosting sites such as Bluehost will have more info about migrating.
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Thanks, Dave for your great input. To date, I’ve restructured my top menu bar, added sub-menus under, even created a Facebook page for the blog ( felt like I deserved a GnT after that one!). The post links are gone from the sidebar, so just now starting to look at alternative themes, there are so many! I need a very rainy day and a “lets do it ” attitude to make the decision to change! There is one question I wanted to ask you regarding your galleries. This is a very nice idea and I thought of adding a similar concept. However, how do you avoid publishing them as a post that shows up to your followers, if you can? I’d just like to create them and then they are seamlessly under the menu…is that possible?
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What I’ve done is to add a Page for each location, then once I had them set up the way I wanted (preview, etc like a blog post) I’d go ahead and publish. They don’t show up on the home blog page as they’re independent pages, not blog posts – you have to link to them from the menu or from a post to make them accessible. They’re kind of like the About page, except that one’s already included in site templates. Folks who use WordPress for things other than blogging can set up entire site structures that way.
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Ah, thank you, Dave. Mystery solved, that was so helpful. I have done one, a Cyprus photo gallery concatenation and slowly I shall work through my visits elsewhere. Need some rainy days for this task, but as it’s not published as a post, it doesn’t really matter when it happens. Appreciate your input, sometimes you want to do something on WordPress and you end up paddling frantically in the ether and just a nudge from a helpful WordPress friend and you are on your way!
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