Turning a Blog Into a Webpage

Hey guys, this will be the first in a multi-part installment.  How many parts?  You'll have to keep reading to find out.  That's code for, I haven't finished it yet, so I have no idea!

When we got engaged one of the first things I did was set up a "wedding website."  I looked around at some different options, and knew immediately that I wasn't going to pay for one.  Yes, it's a nice, centralized place for information, but it wasn't vital, and we could do without it if we wanted.  We're not having online RSVPs or anything, so it's really just an added bonus.

I decided to use the website builder on theknot.com because it was free when you sign up.  It was very easy to work with, but you can only personalize it so much.  There are only so many options for layout design and background, and you're limited to putting only one picture on each page.  They give you the standard pages to use, and then a couple bonus pages you can turn into whatever you'd like.  And that's about it.

But at that point it was my only option, so I plugged in all of our information, and tried to personalize it as best we could.  I put the address on our save the dates, and since sending them, have had some people stop by and sign our guestbook.  So at least I know it's being used.  But that doesn't keep it from being boring.

Last month I decided I would take a go at turning a free blog like this one into our website, and I must say I'm very pleased with the results.  Blogger gives you the option to have multiple blogs under your user name, so I simply started another blog and then took the necessary steps to change it, so it didn't look so "blog-gy" and more like a website.  In the coming parts of this story I'll share with you all the little tips and codes I found to make the changes.  But in the meantime, here's a preview to what it looks like.

Had to blur out the rest of our monogram for privacy's sake.

This is the home page that opens when you go to the blog.  As you can see it's void of all the clutter that makes a blog helpful.  On the left side it doesn't have all the archived dates and posts, but instead it has "links" that bring you to other pages.  On the bottom there are no comments, it doesn't say when the blog was posted, and who it was posted by.  You won't see links for older or newer posts, and it only shows one post at a time. 

I was able turn all of these options off and use html codes to achieve this look.  So definitely stay tuned if you're interested in setting up a webpage of your own. 

If you were to click on "Engagement Pictures" on the left this is what it would take you to. 

And similarly, "What to Wear" brings you to this.

The only downside to this is you can't do an online RSVP.  You might be able to, but I'm nowhere near that handy with html codes and wouldn't know where to start.  You also don't have a typical guestbook.  In order to do that you would have to enable comments, and that opens up the possibility of having people comment on all of the pages.  But neither of those things was extremely important to me, so I'm okay with that.

Coming up, I'll share with you all the little ways I turned the blog into a website, and I'll also have a "fake website" that you can go to and click around and see how it is set up.  That way I can keep my own private!