👻 We Moved from Blogger to Ghost — And Barely Survived

Intro

Moving BudgetTechPicks off Blogger and onto Ghost felt like the right move.
Easy enough, right? 😅

(We laugh now. We did not laugh then.)

In case you’re thinking about migrating too — or you're just here for the drama — here's what actually happened behind the scenes, what went wrong (spoiler: a lot), and why we’d still do it again anyway.

Why We Left Blogger

Blogger was fine... until it wasn’t.

At first, it was simple: no fancy setup, no real maintenance, just hit "Publish" and go.

But as BudgetTechPicks grew, the cracks started showing:

• 🧱 Design felt trapped in 2005 — I found myself haunted by memories of GeoCities pages covered in ✨ glitter backgrounds ✨, hearing the screech of dial-up modems and catching glimpses of dancing baby GIFs.
• 🛠️ Every tweak needed an awkward workaround.
• 🔍 SEO tools were... questionable at best.
• 🐌 Page speed was generous if you had time to spare.

We wanted something faster, cleaner, and more professional — without losing our helpful, human vibe. Enter: Ghost.

Our Actual Migration Journey (The Good, The Bad, and The Gradient)

Initially, we spun up a tiny DigitalOcean droplet and self-hosted our own Ghost site.
Problem solved! Right?

...Right?

...WRONG, BOB.

We immediately blew the roof off — not due to troves of too much traffic or too many wordy posts stuffed with content — but because we tried to install Node.js.

One moment we were excitedly setting things up; the next, our poor server was clinging to life at 100% CPU, clearly considering a bold career change from processor to satellite.

After too many server resizes (and way too many "why is the site offline," "why did it time travel back six hours," and "is it called 'Ghost' because it's literally haunted?" moments), we finally gave up on self-hosting and moved to Ghost(Pro). If we were going to be haunted, we figured we might as well pay for the premium spirits.

Problem solved! Right?

...STILL WRONG, BOB.

Enter: the Hero Section.

We then spent an entire day just trying to fix the gradient background on our homepage. (We wish we were joking. We are not. We wonder if "Hero" is really the most fitting description.)

Still — even after all the chaos, broken formatting, and very questionable CSS experiments — we can honestly say moving to Ghost(Pro) was worth it. The site is faster, lighter, easier to manage, and way more "us."

The Struggles We Didn’t Expect

• 📏 Dividers showing up two feet away from the paragraphs they belonged to.
• 🖋️ Random giant white space eating half the page like a starving Pac-Man.
• 🔠 Header fonts smaller than body text (because why not).
• 🛠️ Needing custom CSS just to get normal margins and spacing back.
• 🤖 Manually restyling old posts one by one because auto-conversion didn’t respect formatting.

What We'd Do Differently (Next Time)

• 📝 Pre-create post templates in Ghost for faster content rebuilding.
• ⏳ Expect formatting clean-up to take at least a few full workdays.
• 🚀 Plan a quiet soft launch instead of fixing everything live.
• 🎯 Focus on rebuilding key posts first — not the entire archive at once.
• 🌱 Accept that some older posts may stay imperfect — and that’s okay.

Was It Worth It?

Absolutely.

Ghost feels cleaner. The blog runs faster, rather than away. The whole site feels truly ours — not duct-taped together under Blogger's weird constraints anymore.

Is Ghost perfect? Nope. But it fits the vision we have for BudgetTechPicks: helpful, fast, no bloat, and enjoyable to read.

Final Thoughts

If you're thinking about migrating to Ghost: expect some chaos, a few existential questions about CSS, and at least one moment where you wonder if it’s too late to just become a potato farmer instead. 🥔

But once the dust settles? It’s 1000% worth it.

(Just maybe budget an extra pizza for emotional support. 🍕)