What do you do when your 20-year blog is about to disappear overnight?

That’s the question our client Vanessa faced when her longtime blogging platform announced it was shutting down, with little warning and even less time to prepare. Two decades of posts, memories, and a devoted readership were suddenly at risk.

Here’s how we rebuilt Vanessa’s beloved blog on Showit, preserved everything her audience loved about it, and proved that Showit blogging can absolutely work for long-form, content-heavy sites.

---

The Challenge: A Platform Shutdown with No Warning

Vanessa had been blogging for nearly 20 years. Her site wasn’t just a hobby, it was an entire community. Loyal readers returned week after week, familiar with every quirk of her layout, every whimsical detail of her design.

Overtime she noticed that readers were dropping off and the platform she was blogging on (Typepad) was becoming increasingly buggy and difficult to work with.

She scheduled a discovery call with me and we chatted about the vision she had for her blog (I also got some great advice on roses from her!) and made plans to revive the site by migrating it from Typepad to Showit.

Then came the email no blogger wants to receive: her platform was closing its doors in just 30 days.

What was at stake:

• Years of archived content and memories
• A dedicated readership who knew exactly where to find everything
• The specific look and feel her community had grown to love
• Her entire online presence

This wasn’t a situation where we could just pick a pretty template and call it a day. Vanessa’s readers expected a specific experience. Any dramatic change risked alienating the very people who made her blog special.

---

Why We Chose Showit for Blogging

When people ask “Is Showit good for blogging?” my answer is: absolutely! Especially for situations exactly like this one.

Here’s why Showit made sense for Vanessa’s project:

WordPress integration for serious blogging. Showit uses WordPress for its blog functionality, which means you get all the power of the world’s most popular blogging platform, including robust SEO tools, easy content management, and the ability to handle years of archived posts.

Complete design flexibility. Unlike platforms that lock you into rigid templates, Showit lets you customize almost every single element. This was critical for Vanessa’s project because we needed to recreate her existing layout (which was TWENTY years old mind you!), not force her content into someone else’s vision.

Custom blog layouts. Most website builders give you one or two blog layout options. Showit lets you design your blog feed, individual post pages, and category pages exactly the way you want them. For a blogger with 20 years of content, this kind of control matters.

---

The Solution: Custom Design That Honored Her Legacy

Our approach was simple in concept, detailed in execution: study everything about Vanessa’s existing site, then rebuild it on Showit so faithfully that her readers would feel right at home.

Understanding What Made Her Blog Her Blog

Before we touched a single design element, we spent time really looking at Vanessa’s site. Not just the colors and fonts, but the feeling of it. The way content flowed. Where readers’ eyes naturally traveled. The little touches that made it unmistakably hers.

Vanessa’s style is whimsical, light, and fun, the kind of space that makes you want to grab a cup of tea and stay awhile. That energy needed to carry through to the new site, while still modernizing and upgrading where necessary.

Preserving the Reader Experience

For longtime readers, muscle memory matters. They know where to find the archives. They know how posts are organized. They know what to expect when they click through from their email.

For Vanessa, this was the ultimate priority, she prioritized her readers above all else!

We mapped out every key element of the user experience:

• Navigation structure and menu organization
• Blog post layout and typography
• How images and text interact on the page
• Archive and category organization
• The overall visual hierarchy

Then we rebuilt each piece on Showit, making thoughtful improvements where it made sense while keeping the core experience intact.

The Whimsy in the Details

This is where Showit really shines for creative projects. Because we weren’t limited by template constraints, we could incorporate all the playful, personality-filled details that make Vanessa’s brand special.

Custom illustrations (of which Vanessa is a master at!). Unexpected pops of color. Typography that feels hand-picked rather than default. The kind of details that make a blog feel like someone’s living room rather than a generic website.

---

The Results

The ultimate measure of success? Vanessa’s readers seamlessly transitioned to her new site without missing a beat.

No confused emails asking where things moved. No complaints about the new layout. Just continued engagement with the content they’d always loved, on a platform that will serve Vanessa well for years to come.

You can actually read about Vanessa’s experience here and see the comments from her readers about how they love the new site!

What the migration preserved:

• All existing blog content and archives
• The familiar layout and navigation her readers expected
• Her distinctive visual style and brand personality
• SEO equity from years of established content

What the new Showit site added:

• A more stable, long-term platform
• Improved mobile responsiveness
• Better backend tools for managing content
• Room to grow and evolve the design over time

“Loyal readers are raving about how user friendly my new blog is. They were really sad to lose our old blog when Typepad closed, but many of them are saying that they can not believe that they love my new blog even more.” – Vanessa

---

Is Showit Good for Blogging? What This Project Taught Us

If you’re a blogger considering Showit, here’s what we learned from Vanessa’s project:

Showit blogging works beautifully for:

• Established bloggers with lots of existing content
• Creatives who want complete design control
• Anyone who needs custom blog layouts beyond basic templates
• Bloggers who value aesthetics as much as functionality

The WordPress integration is the secret weapon. You get Showit’s design flexibility for your website paired with WordPress’s robust blogging capabilities. It’s genuinely the best of both worlds for content-heavy sites.

Custom doesn’t have to mean complicated. Yes, we built Vanessa a completely custom blog design. But once it was set up, managing her content is just as straightforward as any other platform. The complexity lives in the build, not the day-to-day.

---

Thinking About Moving Your Blog to Showit?

Whether you’re facing a platform shutdown like Vanessa or simply ready for a blog that actually reflects your brand, we’d love to help.

We specialize in Showit websites for creative business owners who want something beyond cookie-cutter templates. And yes, that absolutely includes bloggers.

Inquire about custom services here

Not quite ready for custom? Our Showit templates are designed with real content in mind, including layouts that work beautifully for blogs.

Check out the Showit Templates