Why Travelling Tom may be taking a break

Standing tall in Minsk's Independence Square.

Every week since I started this blog on the first day of November in 2015, I’ve posted a blog post. Whether it’s been a travel guide, a roundup of the week’s weird and wonderful travel news stories, a top five list or something for my portfolio, I’ve uploaded content to this corner of the internet regardless of time of year, personal circumstances, weather, or my location in the world.

Though I’ve blogged before about not doing enough, one thing I’m immensely proud of is sticking to a minimum of one post per week. It may not seem like much of an effort, but to keep at something such as blogging for that length of time is admirable regardless of who you are or your subject matter.

I’ve come close at times, posting just seconds before the clock struck midnight to signify the end of one week and to welcome in the next. I’ve had to schedule posts to make up for lack of Wi-Fi and throw something together at the eleventh hour in order to satisfy my minimum weekly goal.

I often wonder when I’ll finally fail to meet my deadline and, in truth, I might not be too far away.

So I might be taking a break…

When I wrote at the beginning of last month that I wanted to do better, I had to consider the reasons why my blog hadn’t been progressing quite as I’d hoped. Procrastination was one of the major ones, but another big player was how I’d created and hosted my website.

If you’re reading this in the days following its original posting on 9 February 2019, you’ll be seeing TravellingTom.com as a Squarespace website. If you’re joining me a couple of months into the future then I’ll have, with any luck, migrated to Wordpress.

Why Wordpress?

What attracted me to Squarespace initially was its user-friendliness. I wanted to get a blog up and running as quickly as possible with minimum fuss, but I wanted functionality and I wanted it to look nice. After doing some surface research and getting a recommendation from Millie from MillieGoes, I found my way to Squarespace.

Squarespace was perfect. Its ready-made templates meant that I could find one that fit the vision I had for my blog, while the content block page and blog editor was seamless – everything had its place and it was really easy to use.

Over the years I’ve wanted to try new things on the blog, to do something as simple as having different words throughout a blog post in various colours, or have the layout of one page completely different to the rest. It is in these small ventures, changes and tweaks where I have found that Squarespace has its faults.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a great place to start my website, but to grow and maximise Travelling Tom’s potential, I need to start up on WordPress. While Squarespace is a squeaky-clean solution on the surface, its lack of customisation options and rigid templates mean that you can never truly make a website your own here. It’s like renting a nice house. It’s good and does the job, but it would be so much better to have your own space where you can carpet the floors, or knock down that wall so you can create a kitchen-diner.

Looking out towards the Atomium in Brussels.

But I thought you said you were taking a break – what does this have to do with it?

While WordPress has been on my mind for a while, only recently have I researched exactly what I need to do to make the switch. To transfer over 200 blog posts, complete with images, videos and other forms of embedded multimedia from one content management system to another is going to be a mammoth task, as is getting to grips with how to do things WordPress style.

What I hope WordPress is able to provide is a more attractive and user-friendly website, particularly on mobile (which is one of the key areas where Squarespace lags behind). Somewhere where visitors can come to get information about where they want to go or learn about new places. A place where I can gather my musings, share my content and allow you to travel vicariously with me.

So…

It’s going to be a slog, it’s going to take a fair amount of time to find a template or have one made, to re-brand my website, to copy everything from Squarespace to Wordpress and to get my website from where it is now to where it should be.

This may mean missing a week or two posting here and there, but by the end of 2019, I hope to be pumping out informative and insightful content for you to (hopefully) enjoy.

So, a little heads up for anyone who comes to this website for the next few weeks. Wish me luck with the move. Gulp.