Before I made the monumental decision to transfer my Blogspot.com blog to WordPress, I read everything I could find online about what this switch augured for me. When I first started blogging, I, as one of the most unsociable people in the universe, was sure that maybe three people in the world would read the blog if I was really lucky. Then, somehow it turned out that what I had to say was relevant to a whole bunch of people from all over the world.
These strangers’ interest in me led me to become more honest about myself. I have made huge strides in my personal development thanks to blogging. A fellow blogger admitted in a comment on my blog that blogging helped her drop the superwoman facade and start talking about who she was honestly. My experience is very similar to hers. The “PhD Vanity” post I published in September of 2010 marked the start of a more personal and honest kind of blogging for me. I was severely criticized for publishing this post on some blogs. Two bloggers used it to research who I really was and threatened me with revealing my real name (one actually followed through on the threat.) Long-time readers might not remember it as anything special, but that post marked the beginning of my journey to a more sincere, pretense-free kind of blogging.
Of course, when I decided to move my blog to WordPress, I was terrified of losing my readership. 300.000+ hits in less than two years is nothing to be sneezed at. (If in doubt, try to get 100 hits per day on your blog and tell me how that goes.) I was terrified of losing my readers who were used to the previous format and wouldn’t welcome the change. However, after installing the redirecting code on my old blog, I had the record number of hits in my two years of blogging: 2,068 hits yesterday, May 23, 2011. And that was after just five days of blogging at WordPress.
As usual, there will be people who will tell me that 2,000+ hits a day is not a big deal and that they have made extensive calculations that tell them how only 5 people in the world read the blog. However, I have researched the issue and from what I hear, WordPress.com considers this kind of readership to be exceptional. So If you want to tell me that I’m nothing special, I will have to disagree. I think I kind of am, and my blogging record proves it.
So if you are considering moving from Blogger to WordPress, just install the code I linked to and sit tight. Readers will follow you to your new platform if you have anything of relevance to tell them.
Clarissa's Blog 
I made the switch and found it udderly painless. I only merit 2-3 hits a day, though, so I had (almost) nothing to lose. Haven’t tried the redirect code. One thing I don’t miss is removing all the line breaks from my offline-edited HTML.
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Clarissa,
I am new to your blog. I live in London Ontario and found your blog through Huffingtonpost.com then through feministblogs.org… A happy accident!
I have never considered myself to be a feminist, but as I read your articles… things just made so much sense to me and a light switch went off…hahaha… now I am all about your blog and can’t get enough…. You are incredibly interesting… Also, I don’t usually leave any types of comments online, but I couldn’t resist! You represent women in a tasteful, real and powerful way. Your blog rocks my world.
-Thanks!
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Thank you so much, Myana! This comment just made my day. And it’s also great to see a fellow Canadian here. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the kind comment. I am now going to brag about it to people.
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Why were people so offended by the PhD vanity post?
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Because I didn’t publish it under my real name but under a blogging pseudonym. And according to them it was my public duty as an academic and an intellectual to write such things under my own name. When I said I wasn’t ready to do that, one of the people went to the trouble of discovering my name and publishing it on their blog with a link to my blog. This blogger I’m talking about is a failed academic who didn’t make it in academia and is now being employed by some conservative think-tank to publish nasty stuff about cowardly academics.
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Ay. What a weird person!
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I wish there were a time stamp on entries here. They exist on the comments, but not on the entries. Is this a wordpress flaw?
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I think it’s my flaw because I can’t figure out how to make it appear. Everybody else on WordPress has them.
If anybody knows what I need to change to get a time stamp on posts, that would be great.
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I am pleased that your move to WordPress has been so beneficial. Welcome on board. Your number of hits is really impressive, and very well deserved.
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Thank you, Charles!
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