So here I am on my new Wordpress Blog which I started after attending the ProBlogger conference on the Australian Gold Coast. I went to this #PBEvent with two non-blogging girlfriends who fancied a weekend away.

They say I never do things by halves and combining a girls weekend away with a blogging conference is typical of me.

But you see even then, I knew that my blog was in a state of flux. I was in a state of flux. What had started primarily to share my Australian life with family and friends, had grown as these things are want to do, beyond the familiar borders I knew. My readers frequently telling me they enjoyed seeing Australia, a place they generally were unlikely to visit.

Yet, my husband had accepted a job in Bangkok and we were on the move…

Why WordPress?

There were several takeaways for me from ProBlogger 2016 but the main one was that if I wanted to progress with my blog I should move from Blogger to WordPress. It would look more established with my own domain name. I did not meet a single Australian Blogger who was on Blogspot, yet in my lovely world of Grannies in the US and UK Blogger was not untypical. Was this going to be a big mistake,

moving from the familiar to the unknown in my online life was mirroring my own life.

I was encouraged by three things:

• Yes, other Bloggers thought my new life spread over three continents, Asia, Australia and Europe would be of interest to my readers.
• I blog as much to learn the technical stuff as for the writing. This learning WordPress was going to be a steep learning curve and why not. I was moving to a country where I knew no-one, was giving up a job that I adored, time was possibly something I did have!
• It gave me the opportunity to sort out the issue of readers not being able to comment on my posts without a Google+ account. Something I know frustrated many.

Why did it take so long?

I set myself a deadline of publishing my Wordpress blog in time for PB Evolve the Problogger 2017 Conference. But my Grandmother died and I diverted back to the UK and it never happened.

International Start a Blog Day

Since January I have joined in with the Problogger Start a Blog course. My Wordpress blog was sitting there in draft format, I had with the help of my friend Catherine transferred many of my old Blogger posts across, but as you will see there is now a years gap! Another Whoops.

This course has given me the impetus to just do it, I needed to achieve a published WP Blog as I was being to doubt it would ever be ready.

It is still not ready, but now it is out there as a soft launch, I know this will encourage me to learn more skills and to tidy it up.

The Little Wandering Wren WordPress blog has been seventeen months in the making. Tomorrow it will look better than today, today looks better than yesterday!

Congratulations to all the other bloggers who have also published their first blogs today. Many of you are brand new to blogging. I wish you a whole lot of fun with your new blog. I hope you meet in the virtual world, and perhaps in the real world like I have too, some fabulous people to share your journey.

Yay made it!