Does a WP.com Free hosted Site Forum Exist?
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When I took over maintaining the SRS website in mid-February 2018, the domain name where the website was located was and is “slaterunsportsmen.com”. I think the person that previously had maintained this site said to me that someone quite a while ago purchased the slaterunsoportsmen.org domain name. I’m not sure if they ever developed a site with that (the .org) location. If they did, I’m thinking they abandoned it and started using the slaterunsportsmen.com site. I renewed the .org domain name though to keep it available to me if we (the SRS club) would want to convert over to the .org type of site.
So I have both domain names paid for till FEB 2019 but am only using the .com domain name and have developed the website on that .com site.
The .com domain name is the site that I have been working with and was trying to understand if I could edit the CSS file. All I see under the Plan description in my dashboard is “Free” beside that and I’m pretty sure it’s a “Personal ” plan.
I understand now that I can NOT edit it with the type of account I have right now – please confirm this liz – Thanks.
SRS – Marion Alexander
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The free plan and the Personal plan are totally different things. See: https://wordpress.com/pricing/
@timethief and I assumed you must have an upgraded plan as an upgraded plan is required to set up a custom domain name in the first place here at WordPress.com. And for the custom domain name not to lapse then the upgraded plan needs to be renewed each year so I’m unclear if you can continue as you are or not.
Certainly, as you have been told from the very beginning, the Premium plan is required if you are determined to have access to advanced CSS customisation. Yes, you could move to a different host and the WordPress.org software would indeed give you the ability to customise your site further. WordPress.com even offer a Guided transfer service: https://en.support.wordpress.com/guided-transfer/ But once at your new host there would be a number of extra things that you would become responsible for such as Security of your self-hosted site, Updates and Backups. These are things that happen automatically here and one of the reasons WordPress.com was set up, to simplify the experience of running a site. -
I am speculating that what has happened is that at one time the person that ran the SRS website bought the domain name and the upgrade. Then they only renewed the domain name and did not pay the second year ‘upgraded’ rate – is that possible?
So now SRS has a ‘upgraded’ domain name but a Free account.
Like I said in the past, I am just trying to see what the limits are to the .com -‘free’ WP plan. I like that it comes with web hosting and the security features. For my level of knowledge, I like just trying to learn how to run things within these boundaries at the moment. But I think I’d like to have more ability to change things and I’ve learned that upgrading to a Premium plan (and staying with the .com plan) may be one way to go. Going to a .org site may be another way. SRS is undecided and when I got the email about the slaterunsportsmen.org domain name about to expire – I acted and renewed that name so we could have some choices as far as direction for the website in the future.
So you stated “And for the custom domain name not to lapse then the upgraded plan needs to be renewed each year so I’m unclear if you can continue as you are or not.” – do you know what plane SRS was using before we lapsed the upgraded plan? No one at SRS knows it seems.
If we may NOT continue as we are – I hope we will have some way to ‘make things right’. I’m new to this stuff and will do whatever it takes to straighten things out.
This would indicate that once someone upgrades they can not go back to the Free plan – is that right?
Thanks for all your work and looking into this. I just want to get this all sorted out for SRS.
SRS
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The $8 per month Premium plan – does that charge include within it the domain name charge or would that be in addition to it? Thanks
If not then – $96/year for the Premium plan dna $… was it $28 for the domain name = $124/year total?
SRS
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Your underlying original site is https://slaterunsportsmen.wordpress.com/ . This currently seamlessly redirects to https://slaterunsportsmen.com/ . https://slaterunsportsmen.org/ also redirects to https://slaterunsportsmen.com/ so you do have two active domains.
An upgraded plan includes the price of one custom domain. The Premium plan is paid annually in advance so in your case that would be $96 although there is the possibility you could be refunded for the cost of one of the domains you have already paid for (depending when you paid for both domains), and could continue paying for that plan annually along with the cost of one additional domain but I’m only guessing. I am just a volunteer in these forums and don’t have access to your account history. You’ll need to wait until staff-zinnia returns to this thread. -
I’ll get into it with liz then.
I know the https://slaterunsportsmen.wordpress.com/ was paid by the guy that just left running the website – for this ‘year’s’ dues – until FEB 2019.I paid for the https://slaterunsportsmen.org/ domain name several weeks later thinking that this would reserve the name in case we wanted to go that route for website. I’m not sure how or why that is active-I thought I was just reserving a domain name and not making it more than that. I apologize if I contributed to this mess.
I want to thank you and timethief for helping me unravel this though!
And as stated I’ll get with liz further. Thanks
SRS -
Hi slaterunsportsmen –
I’m still here, and happy to answer your questions. I want to get this clarified and to a point where you feel comfortable and that you understand what is going on.
Yes, you are right – there’s a paid domain but not a plan on the account currently. This is why you see the free plan option. Any questions about that?
Here is a side-by-side comparison of the plans, their prices, and their features:
https://wordpress.com/pricing/Do you want to continue with both the SRS.org and SRS.com domains? I’ll make sure that the one you want to keep is the primary on the account. You do not need both, but you can keep them with out causing any harm either.
There is not a requirement for these domains to be connected to an upgraded plan. If you would like to add one to them let me know.
I just want to mention as well, that each custom domain is attached to a free site address ending in .wordpress.com. The custom domain is the primary, and it’s all that visitors to the site see. The free version is visible to you in your account and then also staff when we access the account to help you with things.
Let’s start with this bit of information. Write back to me here with follow ups.
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HI Liz,
“Yes, you are right – there’s a paid domain but not a plan on the account currently. This is why you see the free plan option. Any questions about that? “
I think I understand that clearly – thanks.I’ve seen the side-by-side comparisons of the plans.
The SRS Club is meeting on 07APR2018 and I’ve sent an email to them asking for the direction they want to go forward with. I’ve asked specifically if we will go forward with a “Premium” plan. Can we wait to take any action on making one or the other domain names primary until I attend this meeting and get a direction from the Executive Committee from the SRS club?
I don’t want to tell you make one of the domains primary only to have been over-ruled and then ask to change things. So I’d like to keep both domain names like they are for now. If you must take action – I want to keep the SRS.com primary on this account for now. After the meeting Saturday, I could get back to you and let you know what direction forward we want to take regarding any UpGrade.
Please confirm – if I upgraded the SRS.com domain name account to Premium – this is a $96 per year charge – that this would pay for the domain name and allow me to edit CSS with that domain?
Does that Premium account make me go get a web-hosting service and also make me responsible to maintain my own security for the site?
Or is some of this the .ORG plan?
Thanks liz
SRS -
Just to confirm once more, if you upgrade to the Premium plan you can use CSS customization on your site, but by still remaining with WordPress.com you will not have to concern yourself with Security and backups etc as you would with a site using the WordPress.org software: https://en.support.wordpress.com/security/
An upgraded plan would give you access to livechat support with staff which could most likely have solved an issue like this in one single “conversation” rather than dragging things out over hours and days as a free user in this forum. And as @timethief pointed out at the top of this thread for help from experts regarding CSS there is a dedicated forum here just for that. -
Thanks magicrobot.
Does the Premium plan have more fonts for the text styles? Does it allow for modifying those fonts to have borders or shading surrounding the text letters?
Can the Premium plan allow for renewals to our club or allow new people wanting to join – to join? And lastly – does the Premium plan allow for a PayPal button to be used as payment for the memberships to our club or say if someone wanted to by a hat or patch from us?
Still no plugins is there or can you with the Premium plan? I have been looking at some articles about what the Premium plans does – just wanted to ask explicitly though.
SRS
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Howdy – The plan can be added at any time. There’s no rush. Waiting until after your meeting is completely fine.
Could you show me an example of the text design you are looking to achieve?
You would need a plugin to have a true membership site. Plugins are only included with the business plan. Now, you can easily add a payment button and even invite folks to follow the site. If you’d like to have some content that is password restricted so only members can view it, then that is also possible on any plan. Let me know what you’re thinking here…
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Hi Liz – can you tell me how I could share a picture in this forum? Then I could get a picture of the bordered text I’m talking about. Otherwise – I have used text that was black with a white border that follows along the perimeter of the text and this sort of font shows up well against a background that is broken up with a lot of different shapes and colors – like the stream scene on our Home page of out SRS website.
We would like to eliminate the scrolling dark grey block that scrolls up with the Page Title and Description and just have the text against that stream scene background. Looks like modifying the CSS I would be able to do this. The text will get lost if it doesn’t have a border to distinguish it I think though – thus a bordered text font would work better.
We want to have a PayPal button and use it to allow members of the club to renew their memberships – and it would be nice if a new, prospective members could join by using PayPal to join the SRS club. Besides that we have hats, patches and pins that we sell at our meetings but would like to offer them from the website.
So is all this possible with the Premium.com Plan?
Thanks
SRS -
You can add a screen shot of an example to your media library. I can find it there and it’s probably the easiest solution.
Here are the details for the different PayPal options that you can add to the site:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/paypal/
https://en.support.wordpress.com/simple-payments/
Yes, you’ll be able to do that with out having to set up an entire eCommerce store. For example, you can have a Merchandise Page where each item is listed with its own PayPal button – or you could use a contact form just the same. There are options, yes.
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In the SRS media library I’ve added 2 images. The one with the green background has two examples of text I’ve made a border around. This is a sample look at what I’d like to be inherent or achievable in WP Hemingway Re-Written.
The first image in the library is similar to what I’d like the SRS home page to look like. I think I can figure out how to get rid of the scrolling dark grey bar in this theme – if we get the Premium plan and I can edit CSS files – I think- maybe you can confirm this. The file size of that image is 362KB but it’s a pretty sharp focused image. It’s a lot clearer than the one we have currently.
Thanks Liz
SRS
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Hi –
Yes, I believe that we can achieve this with CSS. And, if we can’t, we will be happy to refund your premium plan, so no worries there.
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