"I am asking that we stop seeking out the storms and enjoy more fully the sunlight. I am suggesting that as we go through life, we 'accentuate the positive.' I am asking that we look a little deeper for the good. . Look for the sunlight through the clouds" -- President Gordon B. Hinckley ("The Continuing Pursuit of Truth," Ensign, Apr. 1986, 2-4).
Good question 
Well, I wouldn’t be Rebecca if I didn’t continue to mimic good ‘ol Amazon.com and change my site all up again! 
This time it was a dramatic change. I moved my blog over to my own server so I could have more control of it. I am expanding my skills in the area of web design and took on the challenge of plugins and all that Wordpress Blogs can handle. So, you’ll continue to see some minor to extensive changes around here for the next week or so.
Thanks for all your patience and a BIG thank you to my loyal Readers!
You’ll need to update your bookmark’s and RSS links
Thank you for helping me do what I love to do and reach my dream of being a full time writer!
LDS Newsroom
I thought that something was weird when your pic appeared on the left :o)
I don’t know if it is my computer or what but the word “endometriosis” appears under the other ones.
like the new look
Gwennaelle:
Thank you for filling me in on the Endometriosis floating below the others on the top. That happens when people have a not so wide screen.
Good to know these things - I’ll see what I can do to fix that!
Let me know if you or anyone else see’s anything, I’m trying to tweak all the flaws!
christine:
Thank you!
Are you saying that my sweet 17 inches screen is not big enough for you? I don’t if it is going to like this…my poor screen knows it is too little in many cases but it has been a good screen for two years now and always did its job with no complain. Not a dead pixel ever. Not ever complaining about the fact that I don’t clean it as much as I used to. Never saying anything bad about my look when I sit in front of it first thing in the morning (and yes I do have a life). When it retires (I mean “when I have enough money to buy a BIG one) I will find it a good home because it has been a faithfull servant.
You’ll have to keep us updated on how the migration from Wordpress hosted to running your own goes. One concern that I would have is all of the links to prior blog entries which have been indexed by search engines may not work anymore. You would hope there’s a way to redirect and resolve the old urls to the new one.
Gwennaelle:
Lol. I love how much you love your screen! I hope I fixed the issue with the Endo link so it looks good on your BEAUTIFUL screen now
Peter:
I will keep you all posted. So far, no luck on creating a smooth transition from past indexed links to new ones. So far I’ve noticed that Wordpress.org on the server places a index.php before Year/Mo./Date/[post title] whereas Wordpress.com doesn’t have the index.php. That’s the risk I knew I’d have to take but so far it’s proving not as big of a deal as I thought it would be as I’m receiving more than half of the average number of hits I was getting before. That is more than I expected and I am SO thankful for that!
I feel that I was able to get this lucky because I stayed long enough with my blog hosted on Wordpress.com that I developed a readership. The redirect to my old blog address (blog.smokebrush.com) really helped make as smooth of transition as possible.
Also I learned that I need to put EXTRA EXTRA effort into spreading the word of my blog around the net by participating in Blog Carnivals, Blogging Groups, Blog Indexing Sites, and commenting on other blogs. I’ve learned there are the ‘writing bloggers’ (those who love to write, but can’t seem to find time to comment that much, ‘reading bloggers’ (those who love to read blogs and comment but can’t seem to find the time to write on their own blog, and ‘writing + commenting bloggers’ (those whom I aspire to be like).
All-in-all this is a VERY positive learning experience and a move that will prove to be very beneficial. My theory with Wordpress has proven to be correct so far. That hosting your blog FIRST on Wordpress.com helps you to develop a solid Readership (w/ their Google Juice & Readership Community) and then moving your blog to your own server to have more control + putting in extra effort to spread the word w/o having to pay for Google Adwords.
I’ll keep you posted as I learn more.
So where are you hosting your blog and how much are you paying a month?
Peter:
I am hosted w/ WH4L and they charge about $5 a mo. I have a few upgrades so I was paying around $65 a year for awhile, but now I am paying about $80 a year.
Update on Migrating from Wordpress.com to My Own Server:
So, with a lot of work with my Server Host I was able to get all my old links that are very well indexed in Google Search and Wordpress Community search to redirect successfully to my new blog address.
i.e.
http://blog.smokebrush.com/about-me
now will successfully redirect to:
http://Rebecca.SmokeBrush.com/index.php/about-me
What the conflict in the migration was - is having it on your own server requires “index.php” after the “.com/” . That *MAY* not be the case being hosted on other servers, but that was the case with my server. So what I had to do was have my server host tweak the code on their end to have my old blog address accommodate in the redirect with the index.php added to the new blog address.
Oh - what a relief this is!!! I’m a little bummed that it took 3 days to figure this out. But hopefully my hits will pick back up to where they used to be and we can get back on track.
Good, I’m glad you figured it out. That’s one thing that concerns me when I eventually leave the hosted Wordpress world and move this to where my website is being hosted. I thought I was going to need the “Wordpress / Google Juice”, but I really question if I’m getting more visits to my blog because of it. I think the stuff that I write about is pretty narrow and specialized and most of it seems to be organic search driven. I’m beginning to think that I should have just launched this straight off where my website is and that way the website would be getting additional traffic. I’m not feeling comfortable or confident enough yet to move things over without breaking my well indexed Google search results. I’m watching your migration closely.
*UPDATE* - All my hits are back to normal!!!! HURRAY!!!!
Peter:
I would not have reached the amount of hits I am receiving today, if I had not done the following things (I believe)…
1. Post AT LEAST 3 times a week. But posting nearly everyday I feel helped more.
2. Comment on other people’s blogs at least 3 times a week (especially with those who have similar themes to your own blog).
3. Had a clean, easy to browse layout.
4. Add other little minor details that in the end make a big difference (post in keyword categories, add relevant tags, etc).
Now, nobody knows your blog as well as you. You really have to go with your gut feeling and do what you believe is the right thing for you.
I’m happy to help anytime that you need some help.
Rebecca,
Google reader updated the RSS feed.
DH
Dee:
GOOD to hear!
Thanks for letting me know
I go back and forth on whether or not to stay on Wordpress or move to self hosted. The one major reason I think it makes sense to consolidate this because right now I’m sending people to two different places. I feel like I’m weakening my search strength. I would think that my website search ranking for my business would be higher if I had all these blog entries off the website rather than off the blog site.
I think that if the blog was all I cared then I can see how it might be fine to just leave it hosted with Wordpress. However with the main focus the business, it seems like the two need to be combined.
The other thing that I really like about my main site is the stats that I get from Google Analytics. The Wordpress stats do not provide as much detail. The one thing that I do like about the Wordpress stats is that they seem to update the stats periodically throughout the day. It not real time stats but it does seem to update every few hours. Are you using Google Analytics on your self hosted site?
Peter:
Just be prepared. I’ve noticed in the few days I’ve had Wordpress on my server, that the latest versions 2.3 & up (current software being version 2.5.1) has had A LOT of bugs and errors. Since I’m familiar enough with the Wordpress Software I’ve been able to manage. It’s just tedious and annoying to have to consistently fix this, deal with that, write support note here, etc.
I’m not using Google Analytics. I’m using Google Webtools though.
That’s why I need to hire you to move my blog. Since you’re battle tested, have the experience, and I trust you, we can move it sometime in the near future. The other reason I think it’s important to leave the wonderful hosted world of Wordpress is because I want my website to eventually be an authority site. It’s me against the world.
Peter:
Go Peter go! You against the world!
lol.
Let me know when, and we can make the big move