help with my site

  • Unknown's avatar
    eckelch · Member ·

    I currently have my site on WordPress.org. ElizabethKelch.com
    I hired somebody to build it there for me, I’m trying to maintain it myself. Not working out well because I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.
    Can I combine my name ownership, hosting, maintenance, and support, currently being done with four separate organizations, all under the WordPress.com umbrella?
    Will moving all of it here save me some money? will moving all of it to WordPress.com give me some place to ask questions when I can’t figure it out?
    I am trying to create the simplest setup I can imagine, and by simple I don’t mean Apple’s ‘let us do everything for you’ version, I made simple as in ‘no-frills, straightforward, easy to learn to do it myself’?
    I’m an author and I want to spend my time writing not learning and dealing with my website.
    I’ve been flailing around trying to figure this out for couple years now? Please tell me you can help me with this?

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    Can I combine my name ownership, hosting, maintenance, and support, currently being done with four separate organizations, all under the WordPress.com umbrella?

    Yes it is possible to consolidate these separate items here under your WordPress.com account.

    Will moving all of it here save me some money? will moving all of it to WordPress.com give me some place to ask questions when I can’t figure it out?

    To migrate your site as-is (i.e. create an exact copy here, and close the one you have with Hostgator) cannot be done on our free platform, but can be done by purchasing our WordPress.com Business Plan, which you can learn more about here: https://wordpress.com/pricing/

    Once you upgrade to that plan, we would be able to provide 24/7 live chat support for any questions you have, and we would manage all backups and security scanning for you. We can also walk you through the steps to move your Hostgator site over to us, so no content is lost.

    If instead you would like to reduce your costs, and are open to starting over again, you can do so under our Premium plan. That plan will allow you to import your content from Hostgator (pages, posts, uploaded media, etc.) but will not move your theme or any plugins you use now. Instead you would set up your imported content within on of the pre-installed themes we offer here, so some setup would be required but you would hardly be starting over.

    The Premium plan also includes live chat support (Monday – Friday) as well as maintenance and security. Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.

  • Unknown's avatar
    eckelch · Member ·

    Thanks so much for answering some of my questions
    I beg you indulgence. I have many more.

    I am interested in adding my elizabethkelch.com domain to my WordPress.com account and upgrading it to a paid plan.

    I currently purchase my url from Name.com, my hosting from HostGator, my maintenance from Maintainn, and my support has been through my own clueless efforts and patchy freelance work. Can all this be done on wordpress.com, within the premium plan?

    I believe the premium plan will suit my needs, as I am not committed to any themes or plugins I may have. I don’t understand enough to know if I have any plugins and the theme was simply one picked at random from among the free themes recommended for authors. I’m fairly confident the premium plan will have something suitable. Do you have any recommendations for a good theme for authors that is free with the premium plan and suitable for authors?

    What brings me to you today is that I can’t figure out how to change the links for my social media icons. I expect it’s an easy thing, but only if one knows where to look. I’d like to do my own work, but only ifs there’s training and I’m not flailing aimlessly trying to figure it out.

    I am hoping to find a simple uncluttered setup/service, thats not cluttered with things way beyond what I need and making it hard to figure out the thing I do need. However, I also appreciate that wordpress.com is scalable as my business and understanding grows.

    Can you please speak to some of the disadvantages of using wordpress.com?
    A good many sites/articles talk about one of the disadvantages of can be the challenging nature of navigating through WordPress web design, development and maintenance. I understand custom layouts might be tricky to navigate and the design process can be problematic too.
    I also understand there are lots of updates. There are companies who specialize in maintenance for WordPress sites. Do I still need one of those companies?
    Since so many sites run on WordPress it’s a hacking and malware highly sought target. How does WordPress address that?

    Thank you again for your help!

  • staff-blorbo · Staff ·

    If you’re currently hosting through Hostgator, that means you’re using the software from WordPress.org.

    We have a comparison of WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org at https://wordpress.com/support/com-vs-org/

    What you have currently would definitely be possible here under a Personal plan, the one exception is the theme. Since that’s a third-party theme, it would require a Business plan: https://wordpress.com/support/themes/uploading-setting-up-custom-themes/

    But, we do have hundreds of theme available, no paid plan required: https://wordpress.com/themes

    Choosing a theme is definitely a personal choice. I recommend using the filters there to narrow-down your options. If you want just one recommendation though, give https://wordpress.com/theme/twentytwentyone a try.

    You won’t need to hire anyone to maintain your site. As a fully managed service, we take care of that for you.

    And, as for security, we take that very seriously: https://wordpress.com/support/security/

    Please let us know if you have any more questions!

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