While not all the giveaways have ended, the Mommy Kat and Kids 2010 Holiday Gift Guide has officially drawn to a close and I, for one, think that it was a huge success. Thank you so much to all of the sponsors that contributed to the guide and to everyone that entered and continue to enter the many giveaways!

As Christmas arrives and 2010 draws to a close, Mommy Kat and Kids will be taking a break from posting new reviews until the first week of the new year. Even though there won’t be new posts, the site definitely won’t be idle though! I’ll be taking advantage of the holiday season to move Mommy Kat and Kids from Blogger to WordPress.

There are a few different reasons I feel that this move is necessary. I’ve always tried to make MK&K as user-friendly as possible. For example, I do an HTML edit on every link so that it opens in a new window instead of taking you off the site. I know I hate clicking on a link, looking at something and then having to click the back button on my browser repeatedly to get back to where I was. The edit takes maybe two seconds per link, but when you consider the thousands of links that the site has, the time really adds up.

I also know that Blogger’s default commenting system can be incredibly time consuming. When I used Internet Explorer as my browser, I don’t think I even once had a comment post the first time I hit the button. There was always an error and I had to hit the button again. (For those that are interested, I use Firefox now, which has eliminated the error message when posting comments on Blogger.) There is also an extra page load to deal with that can take a long time depending on your computer’s speed.

Overall, the WordPress system just seems to be far more efficient, and Mommy Kat and Kids has grown to the point that I feel it would benefit both me and my readers to use the most effective publishing platform available. If all goes as planned, the site will switch hosts the final week of December with extremely minimal downtime and since the name and domain will stay the same, none of you, my wonderful readers, should be affected by the move at all. You’ll still find Mommy Kat and Kids at http://www.mommykatandkids.com and all the links to various reviews should still work properly.

Now, with all that being said, I want to hear from you! Have you made this move yourself? How did it go? What did you learn? Did you run into problems with Blogger or problems with WordPress? Did you hire someone to move you, or do you provide the service? I’m definitely not adverse to hiring someone to make the switch for me! Do you have the best hosting, or the worst? Have an affiliate link you’d like to send me? Please pass it along! No matter what tidbit or caution you have to share, I want to know about it!

I’ll also be taking advantage of the move to update the overall look of the site a bit and make some changes to giveaway formats. If you have any suggestions or ideas you’d like to see implemented, just let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

I’ll post an announcement the day the move occurs and another once it is complete. I’m looking forward to bringing you even more great reviews and giveaways in 2011 and I’m confident that with the added effectiveness of the WordPress system I’ll have many more great products to share with you. Wish me luck!