Moving from WordPress.org to WordPress.com
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Planning to move my previously self-hosted (hosted through Bluehost) site from WordPress.org/Bluehost to WordPress.com. I think I accomplished this by going to WordPress.com -> Add new site -> Add through Jetpack. I now have a dashboard both at WordPress.com and WordPress.org, but I still have all the old functionality, despite being on a free platform.
I am worried, as my Bluehost account expires in two weeks, and I at some point am also going to let my domain expire (so would like it to revert to lydmag.wordpress.com). I first tried this process by creating a new blog from scratch, but it wouldn’t let me choose wordpress.com as an extension (I now have lydmag.home.blog, which I’m not a huge fan of). There is no domains tab on my wordpress.com dashboard as there are with the usual blogs, so don’t know how to make sure that my site doesn’t just go down. My entire point was that I want to revert back to hosting it on WordPress.com (right now it still lets me do custom themes etc, but I realise that if it was really on the free plan I would’ve had to pick a new theme, which it doesn’t seem like it does at all).
Can anyone advise on what my next step should be?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi techlydmag, sure, we can help you sort all of this out. Stick with us for a bit so we can make sure we’ve got it all.
First things first, if you don’t like .home.blog (it’s a free extension) you can rename that site here. But the name lydmag.wordpress.com is not available, so you’d need to choose something else.
More importantly right now: connecting to Jetpack does *not* import the site’s content here. Jetpack lets you manage your Bluehost site using the WordPress.com interface. It’s nice if you have a lot of sites to manage them in one place. But it sounds like with the way you have things now, once your Bluehost account expires, your content will all be gone unless you import it first. Right now you’re just seeing two separate sites, the free one and the one with your content.
So the new site, currently https://lydmag.home.blog/ , really does not have your content there. What you see now is all you’ll have left after your Bluehost account expires, unless you import it. Assuming you want to keep your content, please import it using these steps:
https://transferto.wordpress.com/self-hosted-wordpress-org/You’ll want to be sure your images come through too. If you want to work with a similar but free theme, I recommend this one, though you’re welcome to pick from any that are there.
About the domain name: if you let that expire at Bluehost, any previous links to it that have not been “fixed” by outside sites will just stop working. That can cause you to lose existing SEO and links from outside sites and social media. If that’s going to be a problem, could I recommend keeping the domain a bit longer? It looks like it’ll be valid for several months. So you could just map it here (free with the Personal plan) and make the free address primary. Our system would automatically create 301 redirects for you to help point the old (paid) domain to the new free one. That allows search engines, at least, to pick up on the cue that the site links have changed, and they will update accordingly over time. It just takes a while, in my experience. So I’d recommend giving it longer than 2 weeks if you can.
If you don’t get traffic from search engines and other outside sites, or if you don’t care about those pages not working when people click on those links, you don’t need to worry.
I hope this information helps! We’re happy to help more if needed.
Noting too, the personal plan comes with direct tech support, so if you buy that, you can either continue responding here in our public forums, or use this to reach out directly:
Cheers!
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