Building my own website

Welcome!

Hi everyone! I’m Wendy and welcome to Bakabee’s blog. I am so excited to officially start writing my blog. In Bakabee’s blog, I would love to share with you all about myself, my life and of course my bakes! I hope you will enjoy reading it.

I have thought for a while of what to write to kickoff Bakabee’s blog. Why not start with how I built my own website? For most people, building a website sounds impossible, they normally would ask some experts to do it for them. However, I decided to do it by myself despite also being a bit scared by the idea. It took me, roughly, around two months. Although it took me quite a long time to build it, I learnt more than I expected. If I had the choice again, I would make the same decision.

“Believe in yourself, take on your challenges, dig deep within yourself to conquer fears.  Never let anyone bring you down.  You got to keep going.” – Chantal Sutherland

Background

Bakabee’s website started a year ago. I was helped to set it up by a friend and it was hosted by WordPress.com. The website worked perfectly fine. It showed my bakes beautifully with clear captions. However, I always want something better (that’s just the way I am) so I started to learn how to build my own website the way I wanted it to be.

Self-hosting

The first thing I learnt was the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. As a beginner, I was really confused – as most of the articles said I would be! Actually, it is confusing but I am not going to share with you guys the technical difference between them because there are many articles that discuss it. If you want to understand more, go and check them out! (https://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/) But one thing I have learnt about WordPress.org is that I can have the full control of my own website which I really wanted in a long term. I do not only want to showcase my bakes but also I want to develop my website in the way I want in the future, such as selling my cakes online, posting my blog, sharing my recipes, interacting with my followers and so on. Finally, I decided to change my website to WordPress.org.

Web Hosting Company

The next step was choosing the web hosting company. In Bakabee’s Blog, there is no sponsorship or advertising involved (I hope I will have in the future 🙂 )The company I mention down below is absolutely from my own opinion. I read different articles and watched YouTube videos that talk about different web hosting companies. Bluehost is the official WordPress.org recommended hosting provider. So, I decided to choose it and I am glad that I chose Bluehost (https://www.bluehost.com/) because they provide really reliable 24/7 support which is so important to a beginner just like me and their support staff are patient and knowledgeable and helpful! 

Migration

After buying the web hosting service online, I was excited to migrate my old website to the new platform. Before I actually did it, I watched a lot of YouTube videos, all the videos said it was easy but of course, for me, it was NOT! I could not migrate it at all, even though I followed all the instructions. What should I do? I looked for help but no one could help. So, I told myself, if it goes wrong, the worst scenario is to rebuild my website. In this part, I found understanding the actual technical part was really challenging. Also, I had very limited knowledge of doing it – I’m a baker, not an IT expert! After a few days struggling to migrate, I decided to rebuild.

Re-building the website

I can describe this process was FUN and ENJOYABLE, although there was a bit of struggling in the middle of it! I watched YouTube videos and taught myself, I spent quite a few days finding the right plugin to showcase my bakes (I chose the page builder plugin Elementor (https://elementor.com/) and eventually paid for an upgrade to the Pro version) and played around with the different buttons in order to understand how they work. I was really pleased with the result.

What a journey!

Looking back on the whole journey, I enjoyed it very much. I know a lot more about building a website – before I just thought it was a mysterious secret world. It is no longer impossible for me anymore. I realized one thing after this journey, once you believe you can do it, just go for it, no matter how challenging it will be. You will get more than you expect and you will be so proud of yourself that you did it – just like me!!!  🙂 )

If you have any questions about building your own website that you want to share with me, please leave me a comment below. I’d love to help (but remember, I’m not a techie!).   Hope you enjoyed reading my first blog!

Believe in Yourself, Never lose your Faith!