I was doing a bit of research to gets tips on improving my photos of my dishes and food. In doing so, I came across a very helpful blog called the Food Blog Alliance. Part of that site included other tips for bloggers, one of which was to get a domain name. In my case its www.carnivoreandvegetarian.com.
The Food blog alliance suggested getting your domain early on, making it easier to move things over (though google rules and does it for me). I decided to take the plunge. Who knows how big the food blog bubble will get.
As of now, the new domain isn’t up an running, but once it is, in a day or two, you can still find this blog through the current domain, as google will point you to the new URL.
I started out on WordPress.com and did the same thing you are doing last year. Got my own domain and moved to hosted server using WordPress. It was the best thing I did. Far more flexibility in customization of my blog. There was a learning curve, but it was worth it. Good luck and Happy New Year!
Thanks, I had blogspot, and so I don't really have to do anything differently, thankfully. I used to feel a lot more computer savvy than I do now. Happy New Year to you as well.
I did the same thing in 2009 and it was relatively painless once all the search engines caught up. For about 2 weeks, I couldn't search within my own blog.
PS: Welcome to the Foodie Blogroll
Did you go from blogspot too? It was easy from there as google did it all for me. Though I'd like a better template