Domain transfer hasn't worked

  • Unknown's avatar
    littlemissgeeke · Member ·

    Hi there

    I recently transferred my domain host from bluehost to wordpress but it doesn’t seem to have worked.

    Any help would be amazing!

    Thanks

    Martine

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

  • staff-ozmodiar · Staff ·

    Hi,

    I’m seeing martineboothvirtualassistant.com as being registered here at WordPress.com. What are you experiencing that makes it seem like the transfer did not go through?

  • Unknown's avatar
    littlemissgeeke · Member ·

    Hi

    Thanks so much for coming back to me. I spoke to another person at WordPress and they said it was because the name server wasn’t set to wordpress. I have since sorted that out so my domain is with wordpress but my website that I had with bluehost still isn’t showing.

    Is there something that I’ve missed? Does the actual website not transfer over too?

    Thanks

  • staff-doublebassd · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    Migrating the domain and migrating your site content are two entirely different steps.

    For instructions on moving over your site content to WordPress.com, please follow the steps on our support page here:

    https://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-from-self-hosted-wordpress-to-wordpress-com/

    Bluehost will definitely be able to help you if you have any questions from their end.

    Hope this helps!

  • Unknown's avatar
    littlemissgeeke · Member ·

    Hi

    Thanks for the info and the clarity about transferring the website v’s domain!

    I’ve used the article you sent. It is helpful but I’m getting nowhere fast with all this.

    Here’s what happened. I had an account with bluehost. They had my domain but my actual website was with wordpress through bluehost.

    I wanted to transfer everything over to wordpress, including domain, website, everything..

    So I signed up for a personal plan with wordpress and transferred my domain. I now have my domain (martineboothvirtualassistant) with wordpress and also an additonal account with you (martineboothvirtualassistant.com/wordpress) which seems to be the new account I bought on the personal plan.

    What I’m wanting is to use domain martineboothvirtualassistant with all my old website that I had with bluehost/wordpress.

    I’ve looked at the importer option but I only seem to be able to do this using martineboothvirtualassistant.com/wordpress and it tells me ‘This site is already hosted on WordPress.com’.

    I seem to be going round in circles lol.

    Hope you can help.

    Thanks

  • Unknown's avatar
    themagicrobot · Member ·

    but my actual website was with wordpress through bluehost.

    So that content is/was on Bluehosts servers so you needed to be logged in over there to make a backup that can be imported to the new WordPress.com site. Did you take a backup of that content? Is the Bluehost site still accessible?

  • Unknown's avatar
    littlemissgeeke · Member ·

    Hi

    Thanks for coming back to me. I didn’t take a back up of my website because I got confused with domain and actual website content. I’ll try and contact Bluehost again but my account is closed with them so I’m not sure they will give me the content if there is a back up.

    Thanks

  • Unknown's avatar
    littlemissgeeke · Member ·

    Hi

    I’ve now got a back up from bluehost. It’s a file called sitepack.tar

    I’ve tried importing to wordpress but it’d not recognising the file?

  • Unknown's avatar
    helper-heroponriki · Member ·

    That’s correct, we need an XML file for importing.

    Since .tar is an archive format, can you try opening that archive and see if the file is in there? If not, reach back out to Bluehost and ask them to give you a format you can use to import to another WordPress site.

    If there isn’t an XML file in there, you could ask Bluehost if they can reactivate your account there for a month with a temporary domain URL so they can restore the content that way? Then you can do the export yourself and import the files here and once that’s complete you can close your account.

    NOTE: XML export files don’t contain any actual images or media files. They contain links to images and other media, which will transfer to the new site after you import the XML file to that site.

    For this reason, the site you exported from must remain publicly accessible. This process can take a few hours depending on how many media files you have.

    If you intend to delete your content (or the entire site), it’s important to wait until after media files have been successfully imported into the new site.

    I hope that helps!

  • Unknown's avatar
    littlemissgeeke · Member ·

    Hi

    Thanks for coming back to me. I’ve contacted wordpress and they said all they can do is give me the TAR file. I’ve tried a couple of converters to try and convert to XML but the file size is too large apparently.

    Do you have anymore ways I could resolve this issue?

    Thanks in advance

  • Unknown's avatar
    littlemissgeeke · Member ·

    I’ve tried to use a migration plugin but there was an error uploading the file

    This was the plugin:

    https://wordpress.com/import/martineboothvirtualassistant.wordpress.com?support-article=2087#export-using-a-plugin

  • Unknown's avatar
    themagicrobot · Member ·

    What plan did you purchase here at WordPress.com? With the Business plan you could have easily transferred your whole site here (but the old site would still need to be online).
    Alas you did things in the wrong order. If you’d at least taken an xml backup and then deleted your site you’d have words but no images as explained above. My only suggestion now is perhaps you can visit the Wayback Machine and find your old site and manually copy/paste some of your stuff. Was this your site?
    https://web.archive.org/web/20220401093147/https://martineboothvirtualassistant.com/

  • Unknown's avatar
    littlemissgeeke · Member ·

    I bought a personal plan because I couldn’t afford the business plan but it looks like you don’t get access to plugins with personal.

    Yes, that’s my old website! That is hugely helpful. I’ll just copy and paste everything over. I didn’t even know that any web archives existed!

    Thanks for all the help you and all the others have given me. It’s appreciated!

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