I've just entered a whole new world

Yesterday I switched my blog. Not an earth shattering event you might think, but I think it might be (for me) significant. After having the idea months ago it took me a while to get round to it, not least because it involved finding a host at a reasonable price and deciding on a domain name. So, this is it. Nothing too fancy yet (I don't think I ever want it to be fancy) and still the same Titan theme, but at least I now have flexibility.

This is what setting it up involved

• Finding a host - I went for siteground. I got a recommendation from Alan, and friend referrer rate. Thanks Alan :)
• Deciding on a domain name - which is pretty tricky when all the good ones you can think of are already taken and you want something that is going to last, is easy to remember and is relevant to what you do. In the end I went for studentdevpt.com. I'm not sure it meets all the criteria, but it's the best one I could think of.
• Redirecting my previous wordpress.com blog using these helpful instructions (with support from Alun about the redirect here, about mapping urls here and about plugins here)
• Exporting the content from my wordpress.com blog and importing it into my new siteground-hosted blog (thanks again Alun)
• Changing embedded content that was set to work on wordpress.com because it now didn't display, e.g. Slideshare, Scribd etc.

All that probably only took about an hour - although it was stretched over a couple because I was in and out of the garden.

This is what I'm looking forward to

• Flexibility to make changes to html
• Plugins (so far I've installed Google XML Sitemaps, SexyBookmarks, Find Me On, Twitter for Wordpress and WPtouch iPhone Theme - not sure if I'll keep them all yet but it's nice to be able to experiment)
• More choice of themes - I couldn't find one I liked quickly so I've stuck with Titan for the time being)
• Learning stuff

Finally

Thanks to Alan, Alun, JJ and Joss for their help in various ways.

And if anyone you have any helpful hints or suggestions (especially for themes and plugins) for a wordpress.org newbie - I'd love to hear from you.

And hopefully I've have set up Twitterfeed correctly so this post pushes out to Twitter as it used to with my other site...