Domain Transfer and creation of site before live.
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I am in charge of redesigning our company website but do not have experience working with WordPress.
Here is our current situation: a local web business has been responsible for our hosting agreement, the design of our website, and the domain ownership renewal.
Our goal is to overhaul the website and start over from scratch on WordPress using templates and other plugins such as Yoast SEO.
My question: How do we create the website in WordPress 1) without connecting the domain name yet since it is currently in the hands of our other provider. Can we design the site without having the domain name and then change it later? Or would this mess up SEO and such since it would redirect from the old one to the new one?
2) Can we start creating the site without publishing it until it is ready (using templates)? If the domain name is connected with WordPress would the website then be down from when we transfer the domain from the old provider to when we finish the new site on WP?
Help is greatly appreciated!!! I have limited web experience and would love to hear from you.
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Hi there, you’re welcome to create a site without making it live or pointing the domain here, of course! On our servers, you would pick a free domain in signup, and use that until you’re ready go live. The site will be automatically private as well.
If you intend to host somewhere else, you may need plugins or help from your provider to achieve that. Here’s the difference between WordPress with another host, and WordPress.com:
You can use our service, which provides hosting and management, as well as support with paid plans. If you use our service, you would need a business plan to add plugins.
Or, you can buy hosting elsewhere, and set up your own free WordPress installation there. Just note many hosts do not offer WordPress management and support, or they charge extra for it. This is a good option if you want to handle the technical end of things yourself. You’ll still have access to the WordPress.org community here, too: https://wordpress.org/support/forums/
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A separate note on SEO though: you’ll want to be sure you create the same pages on WordPress that you have on the site.
If you decide to host here and you need some guidance with that, just let us know. Cheers!
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Hi there!
Thanks for the info. I’m a little confused about your point on SEO. I believe we plan to transfer hosting to WP as well. What do you mean by creating the same pages on WordPress?
If we create the site under a free domain name for the time being and then change it to the real domain that we already own, will that negatively affect the SEO?
We plan to use a business account on WP and the plugin Yoast SEO.
Not sure how all of this works. I am very new to this!
Thanks!
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If you’ll send a link to the site I can give a concrete example and also give a bit more guidance. But let’s say you have a page on your site called /about-our-excellent-products.html . You would want to make a page by the same name here as you copy your content over.
Does that make sense?
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And:
If we create the site under a free domain name for the time being and then change it to the real domain that we already own, will that negatively affect the SEO?
No, that won’t affect your SEO. No one will really see the new site until you “launch” it with the right name.
What would affect your SEO is if you took a ton of the content off your old site. Let’s say you had a page that answered a ton of questions. People search the web and land on that page. If you decided to get rid of that page on the new site, people couldn’t find it by searching anymore. Any old links to that page would break, etc.
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So, I have not created anything yet. Should I create the site under a temporary domain name and then change the domain name to the one we already own? (since we have to change our hosting providers, etc.), or should we transfer the domain to our new host on WordPress and then create the site using the real domain but wait to launch it?
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I recommend creating the site under the free subdomain we provide first. You can add your custom domain to it later when you’re ready. :)
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How does that work if we want to purchase the business plan in order to use all of the functionality when designing the site.
Is it possible to have the business plan, use the free domain, and then add the domain we already own to the site when it is ready?
Are there are any extra steps we would have to take?
Thanks!
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You’ll still get a free staging subdomain for the Business site.
You do need to declare a domain before you buy the plan, but you don’t need to direct it to the site or transfer the domain until you’re ready.
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I just purchased the business plan but kept the .wordpress site domain (as a temporary) because I don’t have access to unlock the domain that I currently own to do a transfer.
What do I do now? Can I add my domain later or should I try to refund the process and start over?
Thanks!
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Yes, as mentioned you don’t need to add the domain until you’re ready, you can add it at any time. :)
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