So a few months back I decided I’d done enough hemming and hawing about moving my blog from ye ol’ Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress site. I went ahead and snapped up themoderngal.com and nailed down a host. The Modern Gal needed freshening up a bit too, so what better time to send her to the powder room? Well, I contacted a designer who’s work I admired to inquire about a redesign and migration of archives from Blogger to WordPress, and well, let’s just say this designer quoted me a price with four figures. I love the MG with all my heart, but that broad ain’t making me enough money to justify spending that kind of cash on her (especially since I’d already spent the money on the domain and hosting).

You know how the proverb goes — give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach him to fish, feed him for a lifetime. Here’s where I decided it was also time for me to learn how to fish, metaphorically speaking. Basically, I’ve spent a little time here and there in the past few months banging my head against the computer screen and googling the crap out of ‘wordpress,’ ‘hosted,’ ‘blogger,’ ‘transfer,’ ‘godaddy,’ etc. until I figured it out. I’m sure some of you probably could have helped me, but I needed to figure it out myself so I knew the how and why behind the whole process. Lo and behold, things started clinking in place last week, especially thanks to the biz ladies series at Design* Sponge.** $1000? Hell, I’ll do it for $50. Well, maybe $100.

I know some basic HTML — enough to allow me to tweak an already made design and make text do what I want it to. Some of my most dedicated readers might remember the MG’s original design — one with purple and green and newspaper background — that was all my own doing as well (I wish I had a screenshot of the misery, but alas, I did not save one). In my quest for a new career I’ve begun taking some online web design courses in an effort to move my knowledge beyond the basic text and photo HTML codes to one that can handle CSS and other more complex matters that will allow me to get a better handle on creating my own blog design and even fully functioning websites, in case I ever need one of those down the road.

I’ve still got a long way to go and about a semester’s worth of classes before I’m there, so my current WordPress design is just a tweak of the standard theme they give you when you sign up. I’m working on one with the help of a theme generator that has an extra column, so consider it a work in progress. I promise not to update more frequently than Facebook.

Also, I’m in the progress of migrating my RSS feeds so they automatically redirect to the new site. If you’re so inclined, I’d ask you to go ahead and update your feeds now to reflect the MG’s new location. If not, hopefully that will happen automatically in a day or two.

So, without further adieu, I present to you: themoderngal.com!

**Cheers to Noodles for pointing me in that direction. Noodles, once I nail down these design skills, you get a free redesign of Patches and Paws.