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Blogging

The Move: From Blogger to Cucumbertown

September 18, 2015

When I started my blog Saffron Trail in 2006, Blogger was the obvious choice. While I was aware of WordPress, I found the former interface much simpler, easier to customize and I started blogging there.
I’m a creature of habit, and I happily plonked myself on Blogger platform for 9+ years. Some 3 mo

If you are a food blogger and thinking about what’s a best platform for your food blog, this is a post you must read….

When I started my food blog Saffron Trail on a whim, in 2006, Blogger was the obvious choice. While I was aware of WordPress, I found the former interface much simpler, easier to customize and I started blogging there.

I tend to settle into my comfort zone as though it the coziest spot on the couch onto which I happily plonked myself for 9+ years, refusing to move anywhere else.

Every now and then, my well-wishers on Twitter would ask me, “Beautiful blog, great content, but why still on Blogger?”. I had no concrete answers to that, except for laziness, may be.

Some six months ago, I bought hosting services and decided to move my blog to a self hosted WordPress. I did a ton of reading on the subject, almost made a DIY exercise of it. I had to do a hasty rollback as I figured it was quickly getting messy and beyond the control of my moderate ‘techsavviness’.

It was then that I posted a question on a food blogging group on Facebook, about templates for WordPress, self hosting etc. when Cherian Thomas of Cucumbertown spotted this and contacted me.

We got talking, first on Facebook messages, then emails and then hangouts.

Despite Cherian being on PDT and me on IST, we somehow managed to catch up on Hangouts a few times.

I had tons of questions.

After all, if I had to come out of my comfort zone of nine years, there had better be real good reasons for the same. Cherian and the Cucumbertown team jumped in to answer every single question I asked and more.

What struck me was that here is a team that has a solid background in technology and a passion for food and food blogging. They bowled me over by their promptness, one quality that I always seek and admire in any business partnership.

After several of these QA sessions, I was fully convinced and I finally decided to move my blog SaffronTrail to Cucumbertown.

If you want to know my reasons, here’s what they would be:

  • Completely handling the tech aspect of things, while I focus on my content
  • Their association with Cookpad making them a long-term player in the field
  • A super-dedicated and responsive team, be it in design or code or data analysis
  • They realize the importance of mobile as the future of web (nearly over 70% of traffic to blogs is from mobile these days) and they were keen that the new Saffrontrail be completely mobile friendly

Cherian then introduced me to the team – Anand, Basil, Roli, Shriniwas, each of whom were responsible for one aspect of the migration.

Anand was responsible for the design and I had a few things in mind on how I want my refurbished blog to look like, which we discussed on.

Cucumbertown already has a few set themes, but since I had already worked on some navigation and design elements in my head, they decided to work on a theme accordingly.

It took some 6 weeks, but the end result was something I fell in love with -a clean theme that showcases my writing and photographs in the best possible manner, and mobile responsiveness was totally wow!

Basil and team took care of the entire migration in a step-wise and professional manner.

They treated my blog with as much love and care as I would treat it myself. At no point did they dismiss a single concern or doubt I may have had. I have buzzed the CT team at all odd hours and they were always happy to respond.

I have even tinkered with composing posts on my mobile, using the photos in my Camera Roll, and that is the ultimate convenience for me. No matter where I am, with my 4G connection and my mobile, my blogging can continue.

I feel in some way my new blog design reflects who I am and what my blog stands for.For those of you who have messaged me to tell me beautiful the new Saffron Trail looks, now you know where the compliments should be directed.

Cucumbertown is an exclusive food blogging platform and they have ambitious plans for the whole community. Their focus is on to monetizing the blogs and passing the revenue to the blogger while we focus on the content and the audience.

Their immediate roadmap is to work with ad networks and integrate deeply so that the individual blogger gets a much better CPM. In the next couple of months they’ll be introducing a food blogging affiliate feature that connects our content to stores like Amazon, Food52, BigBasket etc. They also have a new Recipe Index , a mobile app, better food blogging commenting etc. in the offing.

So in all, I am super thrilled for the move. And if you want to know some of the other reasons that convinced me to make this biiiiig decision, check out some of the articles on the Cucumbertown Magazine. If you are a food blogger, take note. I have the gut feeling, they are here to disrupt.

Check out my latest YouTube Video: Festive Season Special 3 Ingredient Instant Coconut Laddoos

by Nandita Iyer 
14 Comments

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Comments

  1. Venky Venkatakrishnan says: September 18, 2015 at 12:01 pm

    Nice blog

    Reply
  2. Rekha Shivakumar says: September 18, 2015 at 6:30 pm

    Thanks a lot Nandita for this informative post. I was looking for options to move from blogger 🙂 Shall look into cucumbertown.

    Reply
  3. nandita says: September 19, 2015 at 2:35 am

    thank you

    Reply
  4. Anindya Sundar Basu says: September 20, 2015 at 1:58 am

    Congrats for the shift . Alas they dont have any option for a blogger like me who is also into travel and photography …

    Reply
  5. Cherian Thomas says: September 20, 2015 at 2:19 am

    Hi Anindya,
    Sorry about that. Our tools and focus is all about food blogging and we think by focusing there we can do justice to the niche.

    Reply
  6. nandita says: September 24, 2015 at 3:30 pm

    @rekha – glad that it was useful for you

    Reply
  7. nandita says: September 24, 2015 at 3:31 pm

    @Anindya: Looks like @Cherian has answered you. thanks!

    Reply
  8. Sid Mehra says: May 20, 2016 at 5:48 am

    Lovely design! 🙂 I run my blog on WordPress and pay quite a bit on hosting. If you don’t mind, can you tell me if these services by CT are chargeable?

    Reply
  9. Ramya Menon says: May 20, 2016 at 6:03 am

    @Sid Hosting is completely free on Cucumbertown 🙂

    Reply
  10. Sid Mehra says: June 2, 2016 at 7:33 am

    @ramya – thanks! In terms of revenue, is there any improvement?

    Reply
    • Cherian Thomas says: June 2, 2016 at 8:14 am

      Hi Sid,

      Didn’t quite get the question but here are some resources from Cucumbertown
      that can help understand:

      https://magazine.cucumbertown.com/can-i-monetize-my-food-blog-now-2949672d6641#.j1jgkqexb

      https://magazine.cucumbertown.com/cucumbertown-monetization-crossing-milestones-sending-out-excel-sheets-c24489b4823#.rd5rsllvm

      Reply
  11. Sid Mehra says: June 2, 2016 at 6:10 pm

    I mean, does the revenue from Ads fall or increase? I saw that the views and ranking took a hit initially when I moved to WordPress, and it didn’t go up until I worked up SEO quite a bit for over a year.. So naturally, with dip in views, earnings also took a hit.. so was wondering.. in CT, is there such a problem

    Reply
    • Cherian Thomas says: June 2, 2016 at 7:51 pm

      The ad revenue increases substantially because we have a very engineering
      driven integration with ad networks that’s far more complex and returns
      driven than an individual can do.

      Also, for the migration part, we have perfected this to a science that
      unless you change domain name, chances are you wont see a fall in traffic.

      Reply
  12. Sid Mehra says: June 3, 2016 at 8:08 am

    thanks for answering!

    Reply

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