Since The Blogcademy, I have been bloomin well determined to reach the standards, I never even knew existed until two weeks ago, as soon as possible. I am the type of person that if I can’t do something, I just wont. It is the thing that has kept me on Blogspot for so long. I did try and get on to wordpress a while back after attending Kat’s School of Rock workshop in Brighton, but I did something techy that scared me and nearly cost me a lot of money for nothing… So I gave up. This time round after the same thing kept coming up, I just knew that somehow I had to make the move for good. So I watched a load of YouTube Videos of how to save all my Blogspot blog and download all my post in one document. I managed to register with Dreamhost for my server and installed WordPress Plugin. Then it all went wrong! I had purchased www.fisheedesigns.com and had it redirected to my Blogspot blog which confused everything when I tried to set up wordpress. In theory it should have been easy but I thought I was doing so well until the customer support started mentioning DNS and Nameservers… I had no clue. So rather than running a mile and hiding in a corner, with my new found spirit and determination from those three inspiring girls, I got on to the wordpress forums and looked up some of the answers and posted more ‘HELP! I’M CLEARLY NOT A GEEK’ questions in the forums. I struggled through but then something was stopping it loading on my Mac. This is when I found April. She was such a help, she even went into my site and fixed some things. Although the log in was still a bit temperamental, I still don’t know what that was but I connected via my hotspot on my iPhone and I was able to start browsing through hundreds and thousands of themes. Nothing I could find had the right features I wanted all in one place. I didn’t want to settle!
I have always been a firm believer in the saying ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get’, cheeky or not, it is true. So I composed an email to April, not really knowing the extent of her capabilities, I explained my problem and asked if she was the type of ‘geek’ that could code a website.
“I am definitely not capable of building you something from the ground up. I totally wish I were that girl! haha! Not sure if you’ve looked in some of the places I’ve listed below, but they definitely help when you don’t want something from the wordpress.org choices. Give them a look. If you find something that is pretty close to what you’re wanting, it’s always possible to tweak it with widgets & plugins to get what you’re looking for. Now, that, I might be able to help with. Keep looking. See if there’s anything out there or below that you might like.”
I had already found one that almost worked but needed a bit of tweaking, a bit of girlifying. So I showed April some of the sites I liked vs my old Blogspot explaining what I wanted. Within just a couple of days she had totally nailed it. We had to do a bit of tweeking to confirm with all my OCD about things lining up but she totally got me.
It turned out she was just a girl from Little Rock, Arkansas USA, that loves a bit of Coding. It also turned out the she in fact was starting up this new business, SHFT+CTRL.com helping people like me that are scared of code to take things to the next level. It also worked in my favor just a tad, with the fact she was after some new branding work for the new business so on this occasion just by asking I have been able to swap a trade for a trade, like of off the old days and we have both been able to benefit. Also, now I get to shout about her from the rooftops as we are both now mutual fans of each other!! She even took to reading and reading and reading my blog, one night when transferring all the files to the point her husband was sleepily asking her to stop because the laptop light was too bright! So Sweet!
I told her countless tales of what I had learned at The Blogcademy and about the people I had met, I couldn’t wait to show her off to all you ladies that could do with a ‘friendly geek’ on your email. She has been a dream to work with and I wouldn’t ever take my techy business elsewhere now she has officially set her business up. You can contact her on info@shftctrl.com.
For those of you in the beginning stages of using wordpress we have put our heads together and created not only a brilliant ‘Beginners Guide’ but also MY FIRST DIGITAL PRODUCT!!!!!! OH YEAH!! BOOM!
The 6 Page advice booklet includes some of the basic steps from how to navigate WordPress dashboard to simple steps to start to learn how to use the…. DUN DUN DUUN.. CODE!! It’s is a more generic version of what has helped me go it alone with some code processes – It helped me make the button below that you are about to click on pretty and not your boring old PAY PAL BUY ME NOW button! Click on the link below and for just £2 you too could take WordPress in your hands and master the art!! Who knows, if it is popular maybe there will be more, as I progress – you progress? Would you like more in-depth advice for the price of a cuppa tea? Gowwwaaannnn Course ya do!
Your website looks awesome Emily, you’ve done so much in two weeks!
top of the class! i cant believe how much you’ve achieved in the short time after the blogcademy already! youre putting us all to shame
AHHHHH!!! YAY!! Thank you so much! that means a lot!!
Keep an eye on my progress Headmistress .. There’s so much more to come! 
Oh!
I totally had the same problems with WordPress and plugins and, ugh, everything you mention, for about two years too.
I’ve been watching the blogs of you Blogcademy graduates closely and you have done AMAZINGLY!
Will pass on this post to other not-enough-geek peeps!