I did it…I finally said goodbye to wordpress.com and moved to a self-hosted site! Beginning today, all traffic to the old site (http://aucoeur.wordpress.com) should be redirected to my new domain, https://amberhinds.com.
I’m really excited about this new site. Being self-hosted allowed me to better make use of my design abilities and to create a more visually appealing site. Gone are the barely modifiable stock templates and WordPress ads. Now when you visit my site, you’ll see this:
and this:
I’ve basically re-branded myself to create a consistent look and feel throughout the site. I spent a lot of time thinking about what I want to do and have been slowly fiddling around with graphic design and layouts in between everything else that I try to do. I’m still working out some kinks and trying to decide if I want to watermark and re-upload my hundreds of pictures, but I finally feel like it’s done enough for me to “move in.”
Please take sometime to surf around and let me know what you think! If you subscribed to my old blog via the feedburner links, then you should continue to receive posts as usual. If you subscribed through wordpress, including some of you who receive updates via email, you’ll need to resubscribe. Here are the links:
I’m also excited about this site because it gives me a better presence for my lactation counseling work (classes coming soon, but I’m available for consultation now!) and especially for my web design work.
Sometime this summer or fall, I’ll stop babysitting and we’re going to try to get by without that income, and I’m hoping web design might be it. I’ve been teaching myself a ton and think I’m putting out some really great sites. 
This is one I just completed for Nantucket Cribs, a baby equipment rental company. Go check it out too, I’m pretty excited about how it turned out and really had a lot of fun putting it all together.
I can’t wait to hear what you all have to say about my new site. Leave me a comment and let me know! And if you think you might be interested in having me build a site for you over the summer, let me know that too. I’m going to be doing them for next to nothing for the next couple of months so that I can build a decent portfolio.
Erin Althoff
Congratulations and beautifully done! What graphic design and web programs do you use? I’ve always had access to adobe products through work and school, but now that I am (joyously!) unemployed for a few more weeks, I am looking for a lower-cost alternative.
Amber
Erin AlthoffI’ve built sites in Dreamweaver, and sometimes just written new pages in notepad. I’ve gotten to the point where I know what different commands will do, so I don’t necessarily need a live view as I write. This site and the Nantucket Cribs site are built in WordPress using the Genesis framework, which I’m really into right now. http://www.studiopress.com/ WordPress is open source, the Genesis framework I bought, but for the functionality it was worth it. We do own a slightly older version of Photoshop, but I don’t use it all that often. This is going to sound crazy, but I do a lot of graphic work in Paint of all things. It’s surprisingly functional. All of the graphics on this site were made in paint! I edit photos in Picasa or, if I need to do more, in Piknik, which has both free and paid for editing tools. http://www.picnik.com