Building a new site

  • Unknown's avatar
    frederiquenahmani · Member ·

    Hello,
    I’m helping my sister with redesigning her site. She’s a lawyer. I have 3 questions
    1) are there any drawbacks in terms of google rankings, flexibility with the administration or whatnot of not transferring hosting but only do a domain mapping and then point to the new site with you?
    2) if I do choose to transfer, how do I insure there’s no gap in terms of emails etc during the transition
    3) Can i build a site before I transfer anything just to see what it looks like and your tools? how do i do that? your site doesn’t seem to allow it
    4) i would like a theme that is very simple, doesn’t scroll down, allows for a featured image that doesn’t take the whole screen. I also want a button to switch between 2 language versions of the site. any recommendation for a theme that works with those requirements?
    Thanks for your help

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • staff-zinnia · Staff ·

    Hi –

    Thanks for getting in touch. I’m happy to answer these questions.

    1) are there any drawbacks in terms of google rankings, flexibility with the administration or whatnot of not transferring hosting but only do a domain mapping and then point to the new site with you?

    From an SEO perspective it does not make a difference on whether or not you transfer the domain over to WordPress.com or just point it here with mapping. Transferring a domain will take it down for about 5 days while the process completes. Mapping is typically done with in 72 hours. These aren’t times that we actually have control over.

    1. Mapping: https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-existing-domain/
    2. Transfer: https://en.support.wordpress.com/incoming-domain-transfer/

    My advice is to set the new site up and once it is all ready to go, THEN, connect the domain. This will limit your down time and prevent SEO confusion if you have the same content on 2 different sites, etc…

    Keep the site private until it’s ready: https://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/

    2) if I do choose to transfer, how do I insure there’s no gap in terms of emails etc during the transition

    Domain transfer takes 5 days to complete. The email won’t work during that time. Set up an auto responder for that time frame. Otherwise, when the transfer takes place we do our best to pull in all DNS records connected to the domain. If they don’t come across you can add them again by clicking on My Sites – Manage – Domains – DNS – Add Record

    3) Can i build a site before I transfer anything just to see what it looks like and your tools? how do i do that? your site doesn’t seem to allow it

    Absolutely! Just register a free site under this user account to get started. There’s some great resources at
    – https://learn.wordpress.com/
    – https://en.support.wordpress.com/video-tutorials/get-started/

    All of our themes are in the showcase at https://wordpress.com/themes/

    4) i would like a theme that is very simple, doesn’t scroll down, allows for a featured image that doesn’t take the whole screen. I also want a button to switch between 2 language versions of the site. any recommendation for a theme that works with those requirements?

    Yes, you can set up a one page non scrolling site. This is the best way to set up a multi language site:

    Set Up a Multilingual Site

    That’s a ton of information. Write back with more questions :)

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