Need serious advice about moving from WordPress.org to .com
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Hello,
I’m new here … well, actually, I’m not “here” yet, but I’m seriously thinking about it and in need of feedback, advice, recommendations, suggestions, whatever.
I current have two self-hosted WordPress sites and am considering bringing them over to WordPress.com. I know, that seems backwards from the way most people do it, but in the six years that I’ve had my main site, I’ve used only 1.4 GB of space and have an estimated 12,000 monthly visitors – so we’re talking very small. That said, I have loyal followers who have been with me since I started in 2005 on Blogger. I graduated to WordPress in 2008 and have been with InMotionHosting since then. My subscription runs out at the end of November, although they’ve been so horrible that I may make the leap before that. These are the options I’m looking at:
— WordPress.com, either premium or free (with $13 fee to use my own domain name).
— GoDaddy Managed WordPress hosting, which currently is on sale. I’d need a step up from their basic plan.
— GoDaddy regular hosting.
— Someone else??The first two options don’t come with e-mail, so I would have to find a solution. I’ve read that you can direct e-mail from a WordPress.com site to whatever address you want, but I keep a special Outlook (2007) folder for all of my “work” e-mail.
GoDaddy’s regular hosting would offer me an e-mail account, plus I’d be able to stay with cPanel and also could transfer my domain(s). But I’m frightened of their awful reputation. As miserable as InMotion tech support has been, it’s rated far higher than GoDaddy’s – although they may not keep that ranking with the apparent changes they’ve made. I used to be able to call, but now they tell me to submit an e-mail ticket, which takes up to 24 hours to get a reply – and note that I say “reply,” and not “answer.” I’ve had a running two-month issue with them. Finally, they admitted last week that the cause of the problem was brute force attacks (I asked about that right up front in early August, and they refused to look into it and referred me to a bunch of online articles). When I finally complained to customer service, they made a bunch of excuses, one of which was that their tech support people couldn’t be expected to have thorough knowledge of all the various third-party applications out there. They ignored my comment that WordPress isn’t just any “third-party application.” In the last exchange, customer service told me that I either need to hire a web developer or upgrade to their managed hosting.
Seriously, if “tech support” means getting referred to online articles (some more than two years out of date) and doing it yourself, it seems to me that WordPress.com’s support is as good or better.
My skills are pretty limited, but with a small site and extremely modest earnings (PayPal button), I have to do my own work – and in the past six years, I have. I purchased and installed a highly customizable theme and did all the setup myself, changed colors, fonts, layout, etc. I do my own WordPress updates and know how to do backups in cPanel. I’ve also added a few plug-ins, although nothing fancy. Mostly, I just need the basic stuff. I do use a couple of widgets that might not be allowed at WordPress.com. They aren’t essential, but they’re very cool. Bottom line is that I don’t NEED managed WP hosting, but if it would make my life easier so I could focus on content, that would be lovely. I also don’t need to keep my current theme. It’s time for an update. There are a couple of options in the free theme section that work.
The bigger question is whether all of my content will transfer over to WordPress.com. I get a lot of traffic from people looking through the archive of old posts and articles.
GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress Hosting is pretty new, and I haven’t read anything disastrously awful about it. Not sure anyone here would know, since that’s a WordPress.org issue, but if anyone has heard anything substantial from people who actually have used it, please let me know. If I decide to go with GoDaddy, whether regular or Managed WordPress Hosting, I need to do it while they have this special offer. Cost IS an issue. Otherwise I’d let a developer do it all while I sat around the pool sipping drinks.
Are there other things I need to consider that would make my decision any easier?
Sorry for the very long post, but this is a huge decision, with many considerations and a lot of confusion and uncertainty.
Thank you for reading,
Pat -
Hey, Pat. Well, I’m not as familiar with GoDaddy as you are, but it sounds like you haven’t been impressed by them. Moving your site to WordPress.com is going to place some limitations on your site, but from what you told us, it seems that you aren’t bothered by that. If keeping it simple is your main goal, so that you can focus on the content, I’d say that WordPress.com is the best option of the ones you’ve given us.
Just my $0.02.
Cheers,
-Brian -
As for whether all of your content would transfer, I can’t say. But it’s free to set up a site on WordPress.com, so you could try it and see.
You could start here:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/import/
Cheers,
-Brian -
Good point, Brian! I guess a “free trial” would be a consideration I didn’t think of — I know, sounds like a no-brainer, but I’m hoping not to have to do a ton of trial and error. I actually do generate some paid work from my site, and I’m WAAAAAAY behind as a result of this mess with InMotion.
What about WordPress.com Premium? Do you have any experience with how it stacks up to Managed WordPress Hosting — the comparably priced ones, that is, and not the ones that start at $29.95/mo.
Thanks again!
Pat -
Sorry, Pat. I’m just a freeloader, so I don’t have any first-hand experience with any of the paid services. This page gives a brief comparison of the three different options offered by WordPress.com.
http://store.wordpress.com/plans/Maybe it will help you compare Premium to some of the other options you’re considering.
Cheers,
-Brian -
The content (Posts and Pages) should transfer. Widgets & the look will not transfer
What is the URL of your current site? That might help folks a bit to help you.
The terms of service do put some limits on what you can do (you can’t sell ads and only sell your own products and services)
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Why don’t you simply register a blog here, set it to Private, and see what the import looks like? If you don’t like it, then you can just abandon or delete it.
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Thank you auxclass and raincoaster.
My site is http://realastrologers.com/blog
(I have a homepage, too, but there’s no way I’d even try to replicate that.)
I’ve spent the past couple of hours playing with a free WordPress theme to see how it would look. It’s not bad, actually. I couldn’t get a couple of the widgets to work, but it might be a size problem, since I just copied code from a text widget on my current site. Also need to figure out whether the theme I’m using will allow me to post a thumb and a few lines of each post on a blog page and a link to the rest. I write very long posts, so I need to have that option.
I don’t suppose I’ll know for sure whether all my posts transfer over until I remap my domain name, which I’m not ready to do yet.
Thanks for your help and good suggestions, everyone. All useful!
Pat
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the code you can use here is restricted, no script or iframe
You have a WordPress.ORG install – all the Posts should transfer over
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Thanks, auxclass. That article explained the concept very well, but I don’t do code — well, unless you count basic html and css. I don’t even know what an iframe is or how javascript works, etc. — another reason I’m willing to sacrifice some of the bells and whistles and switch to WordPress.com. I could get rid of the entire homepage on my site, and I doubt anyone would even realize it was gone. It doesn’t serve any purpose, really.
I’m half sold on WordPress.com after working with the theme this evening. Just not sure whether I’ll stay free or go premium.
It certainly helps that people have been responding so quickly to my post here — gives me some confidence that if I run into trouble, I’ll find some answers.
Thanks again.
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I recently tried wordpress.com and found their customer support to be very helpful.
I finally decided to switch to GoDaddy.com’s hosting since I do development and needed more flexibility in managing my hosting. But WordPress.com support was very helpful. Even when I migrated to GoDaddy’s hosting server, the support people still helped me step by step to migrate my followers as well as stats from the site hosted on wordpress.com.
I found going with a regular hosting plan with GoDaddy.com to be a good option.
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Script & iframe are commonly used to insert references to outside web sites – they can be inserted into Widgets and you mentions problems with a Widget or two and this is a common issue
Some days we are good with answers – other days things are a bit slower but everyone that helps in the forum does try and give accurate help
Good luck
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Thanks for the feedback, Raringsunny. I think that if I were a developer, I wouldn’t be so hesitant to go with one of the big/cheap hosting services.
The problem I had with InMotion had to do with security from brute force attacks, although it took two months for them to admit it, and in the meantime they put me through hell. That’s the sort of thing that worries me regarding tech support at a hosting service like GoDaddy. I’m afraid I could be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. If I were a developer, I might be able to figure out that sort of thing myself, or at least I’d understand the online articles. They were of little help to me — e.g., talking about inserting code somewhere in your files. I didn’t even try that for fear of breaking my site — especially since others were leaving comments that they tried the suggested fix and it didn’t work. The articles I’ve seen so far on WordPress.com are much easier to understand.
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Here’s a link my two cents worth on this subject:
7 Reasons Why I Like WordPress.com Hosting -
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P.S. I used to self host my personal blog but I moved it back to WordPress.COM hosting and I have no desire to ever self host again.
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Like @TT I used to have a .html & WordPress.ORG site – moved to WordPress.COM for several reasons and except for some software changes (Blue Death Editor & such) have been pretty happy – no plans to move – nice to have the staff do the upgrades and knowing that if I get a spike in traffic that the servers will not go down. I stress tested my old site once and I think it started to have problems with about 4 or 5 users at the same time. Even with the no ads upgrade and having my custom email hosted at my old ISP I still save a bit of money.
Yes there are some limits here but they have not bothered me much – would like to have better stats (QuantCast was great) – but have a couple of third party stats packages so I can see a bit better the reach my site has around the world.
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Well, that’s some pretty strong testimonial.
I’m trying to import my posts now to see how it will work. Initially looks like it is going to be a pain in the behind, and I can’t get an archive of a previous author’s work unless I import them under my own name, which I won’t do. Aaaargh.
Will have to figure out the e-mail thing and maybe come up with some kind of overall price comparison like in TT’s article.
Thanks everyone. I’m still exploring, so if anyone has anything to add, I’m very open to suggestions.
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OK, I’ve got a theme that works nicely — 2012 — and with the header image I created and same background I use on my self-hosted site, the feel is not all that different. My “brand” is instantly recognizable. That’s the good news.
The bad news, I’m afraid, is that I’m going to lose thousands of images in six years’ worth of posts. I successfully imported all posts and pages, and they look terrific, but I was horrified to discover that the reason for that is that all the links are to the media library on my self-hosted site. I thought that maybe when I re-direct my domain name to my WordPress.com site, the links would be work. But the path looks different. And I’m afraid that if I re-upload the images to my temp site, I’ll have the same problem when I remap my domain.
That’s not really for this thread, so I’ll have to either find a relevant thread of start a new one. Any thoughts?
Thank you!
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