DigitalOcean to a wordpress.com Business account

  • Unknown's avatar
    pmjchart · Member ·

    Hi there, regarding transitioning a site currently hosted with DigitalOcean to a wordpress.com Business account, please could someone help with the below questions:

    1) With a wordpress.com Business account, custom themes and plugins can be used but only uploaded via zip file, as there is no sftp access allowed?

    2) I have a domain name already registered. Nameserver records at my current domain name registrar would need to be updated to point to wordpress.com. I do not though have to transfer the complete management of my domain to wordpress.com? I would however still need to pay a US$13.00 annual domain name mapping fee to wordpress.com if I retained my current domain name registrar?

    3) I have email associated with my domain name. After updating nameserver records at my existing domain name registrar, I would then create new MX, txt, CNAME and A records using the wordpress.com domain name management tools?

    4) JetPack is auto-enabled on all wordpress.com Business accounts. Does this mean I also have access to VaultPress for automated daily file and database backups? If not, how can I perform regular file and database back-ups of my site?

    5) Should I continue to use SendGrid or Mailgun for application level emails?

    6) Are there any disk or bandwidth quotas applied to wordpress.com Business accounts?

    7) Are custom .htaccess rules possible?

    8) In which country would my site be hosted?

    Many thanks

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

  • staff-zara · Staff ·

    Hello there,

    Thank you for considering WordPress.com. I’ll try my best to answer your questions and at the same time tagging modlook for Staff’s clarification and to answer some of your questions.

    1) With a wordpress.com Business account, custom themes and plugins can be used but only uploaded via zip file, as there is no sftp access allowed?

    WordPress.com doesn’t provide any FTP/SFTP access to all users. So uploading custom themes and plugins can only be done via upload.
    https://en.support.wordpress.com/themes/adding-new-themes/
    https://en.support.wordpress.com/plugins/adding-plugins/

    Do check this list of incompatible plugins too: https://en.support.wordpress.com/incompatible-plugins/

    2) I have a domain name already registered. Nameserver records at my current domain name registrar would need to be updated to point to wordpress.com. I do not though have to transfer the complete management of my domain to wordpress.com? I would however still need to pay a US$13.00 annual domain name mapping fee to wordpress.com if I retained my current domain name registrar?

    If you prefer to map your domain to WordPress.com site instead of transferring it, your new Business Plan upgrade will grant you a free credit for that purpose so you won’t need to pay US$13.00 yearly for the domain mapping fee.
    https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-existing-domain/

    3) I have email associated with my domain name. After updating nameserver records at my existing domain name registrar, I would then create new MX, txt, CNAME and A records using the wordpress.com domain name management tools?

    If your domain remains with your current domain registrar, the MX, TXT, CNAME and A records should be maintained by logging in to your account with the domain registrar. Since your domain is not managed by WordPress.com, WordPress.com doesn’t have the control over your domain.

    @Staff    , please correct me if I’m wrong.

    6) Are there any disk or bandwidth quotas applied to wordpress.com Business accounts?

    There’s no storage limit for WordPress.com Business plan.
    https://wordpress.com/pricing/
    And all plans (free or paid) has no bandwidth quota.
    https://en.support.wordpress.com/discover-the-wordpress-com-plans/

    7) Are custom .htaccess rules possible?

    I’m not sure what is the webserver that WordPress.com is using but I don’t think they allow editing .htaccess rules for Apache.

    I’ll leave some of the questions to be answered by the Staff.

    Cheers.

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    3) I have email associated with my domain name. After updating nameserver records at my existing domain name registrar, I would then create new MX, txt, CNAME and A records using the wordpress.com domain name management tools?

    Correct. Pointing the name servers to us will move control of the domain’s DNS to us, so any DNS records required for your email will have to be added here. We recommend you do this before switching the name servers to us, to ensure minimum downtime on your email. In other words, add the Business Plan and domain mapping upgrade, then add the DNS records, and only then point the name servers to us.

    We have instructions here:

    Add Email to Your Domain

    For certain email providers we also support a one-click setup for the DNS.

    4) JetPack is auto-enabled on all wordpress.com Business accounts. Does this mean I also have access to VaultPress for automated daily file and database backups? If not, how can I perform regular file and database back-ups of my site?

    Jetpack now has backups directly built in, and as far as I know that’s now enabled by default on new Business Plan sites, rather than VaultPress.

    You can find info on Jetpack backups here: https://jetpack.com/support/backups/ But ultimately it’s just a new iteration on VaultPress, so you can still download backups at a specific point in time, do one-click restores, etc.

    5) Should I continue to use SendGrid or Mailgun for application level emails?

    We already use Mailgun for emails from your site, so it should not be necessary to set up anything yourself, but in some cases there are sometimes issues in which case we recommend using services like those along with a SMTP plugin on your site. But if all goes well you won’t need to.

    7) Are custom .htaccess rules possible?

    It’s not possible to edit .htaccess, no, but depending on what you want to do, it might be possible with a plugin.

    Let us know if you have any more questions about this.

  • Unknown's avatar
    pmjchart · Member ·

    Many thanks staff-zara and @kokkieh. So, to summarize:

    1) No FTP or SFTP access on the Business Plan
    2) Domain name mapping is free on the Business Plan
    3) Create new domain records at wp.com then update name server details at my current domain name registrar to point to wp.com to minimize email downtime
    4) One click site restore and file & database download and backup provided by JetPack
    5) Mailgun already enabled so separate SendGrid account not required
    6) No disk or bandwidth limits on the Business Plan
    7) Custom .htaccess rules potentially possible via plugin

    My last question was regarding the physical location of wp.com servers.

    Will my site be hosted and backed up on servers in the United States?

    Many thanks again.

  • Unknown's avatar
    brookedot · Member ·

    Hi there,

    To clarify some of these a bit more:

    5) Mailgun already enabled so separate SendGrid account not required

    We do provide Mailgun for transactional email (such as password resets and new users notifications). If you’re planning to run a mailing list or send out order emails then you will want to set up a third-party SMTP client within the site.

    7) Custom .htaccess rules potentially possible via plugin

    We use Nginx and not Apache and do not allow direct modification of .htaccess however, some common tasks, such as redirects are possible via plugins.

    Will my site be hosted and backed up on servers in the United States?

    Currently, our origin locations are all based within the United States with global caching and CDN servers. However, we are always expanding our network so this may change in the future.

  • Unknown's avatar
    pmjchart · Member ·

    Thanks for the clarification @bdukes

    Is the wp.com Mailgun network implementation therefore restricted to only email generated via core WP functions? And, if I install WooCommerce or any other plugin, calls to wp_mail() will NOT be processed through Mailgun?

    On the Business Plan, is it possible to switch between the default Calypso-powered wp.com admin interface and a standard wp.org style admin view?

    I’ve read elsewhere on these forums that changing a permalink once a post has been published is not possible or wp.com. Is this correct, even on your Business Plan?

    Many thanks

  • Unknown's avatar
    brookedot · Member ·

    Is the wp.com Mailgun network implementation therefore restricted to only email generated via core WP functions? And, if I install WooCommerce or any other plugin, calls to wp_mail() will NOT be processed through Mailgun?

    MailGun will be used for anything that uses the wp_mail() function, however, depending on the volume we may ask you to install a third-party SMTP plugin. If you are planning to use WooCommerce I’d recommend starting with a third-party mail plugin.

    On the Business Plan, is it possible to switch between the default Calypso-powered wp.com admin interface and a standard wp.org style admin view?

    Yes, with the Jetpack plugin which is installed and required for all WordPress.com Business sites you’ll be able to switch between interfaces. Even for sites outside of WordPress.com the Jetpack plugin brings Calypso to all WordPress sites.

    I’ve read elsewhere on these forums that changing a permalink once a post has been published is not possible or wp.com.

    It sounds like there may be some confusion here between the permalink itself and the permalink structure. To clarify, the permalink of a post can be changed at any time, even after a post is published. Let’s say you had example.wordpress.com/2018/08/27/some-post the slug (or some-post could be changed even after the post is published.

    However, with WordPress.com the permalink structure (year/month/day/) can’t be changed. With WordPress.com business both the permalink/slug can be changed and the permalink structure. As an example, this would allow you to do/some-post instead of including the date if you wished.

  • Unknown's avatar
    brookedot · Member ·

    Is the wp.com Mailgun network implementation therefore restricted to only email generated via core WP functions? And, if I install WooCommerce or any other plugin, calls to wp_mail() will NOT be processed through Mailgun?

    All mail sent from your site will use MailGun including those from third-party plugins such as WooCommerce which use wp_mail(). While we don’t block messages, if you’re sending a lot of emails we strongly recommend using your own SMTP client as our system isn’t designed for anything more than basic transactional emails. If your site hits our limits your site may be temporarily blocked from sending mail. For that reason for sites using WooCommerce I would recommend setting up a third-party mail solution from the start.

    On the Business Plan, is it possible to switch between the default Calypso-powered wp.com admin interface and a standard wp.org style admin view?

    Absolutely, all Jetpack-connected sites have the ability to switch between Calypso and WP-Admin. Since WordPress.com Business uses Jetpack you’ll be able to switch between the two interfaces like you can on all WordPress.com and Jetpack-connected sites.

    I’ve read elsewhere on these forums that changing a permalink once a post has been published is not possible or wp.com. Is this correct, even on your Business Plan?

    There seems to be some confusion here, around the permalink itself (or its slug) and the permalink structure. On all WordPress.com sites, the slug can be changed at any time even after a post is published. For example, if you had example.wordpress.com/2018/08/29/some-post-slug as your permalink the some-post-slug can be updated from the interface.

    However, the permalink structure, 2018/08/29/$post-slug can only be updated on sites using our Business Plan. This allows you to remove the date or make other desired changes to the structure.

  • Unknown's avatar
    pmjchart · Member ·

    Many thanks for your comprehensive explanations @bdukes. Very much appreciated.

  • The topic ‘DigitalOcean to a wordpress.com Business account’ is closed to new replies.