Renew old site and change name or new site with a link to the old

  • Unknown's avatar
    hummushumorhope · Member ·

    I had an old premium site that went defunct several years ago. However, it’s now available as a free site although my last blog was several years ago. I am ready to start blogging again but would like a new name for the site. Am I better to start fresh with a whole new site or upgrade and change the name? I would still like access to a few of the old blogs to perhaps repost a few of my favorites. Can I just link to the old site if I start a new one? Thanks for the advice

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Hi there, you can change the URL of your free WPcom site by following this guide: https://wordpress.com/support/changing-site-address/ but once you change the address, you will not be able to reuse the old address.

    If you think you want to keep the old address, you can register another free website under this same account at https://wordpress.com/start/site but be aware that your Display Name will be the same on any site you open under this same account. If you’d prefer to have a different display name on your new site, you can first create a new account with an entirely different email address before registering a new site.

    As far as keeping the old address and reposting some posts, you can bulk edit https://wordpress.com/support/posts/edit-posts-screen/#bulk-edit in the WP Admin Posts dashboard to make private any posts you no longer wish to display (this will, of course, cause 404’s in search engines) by selecting those posts and using Quick Edit to change the visibility of multiple posts at one go.

    If you decide to go with a new site instead, you can also selectively export certain posts from your old site by first creating a special category, like EXPORT, and then adding the category to those posts you wish to export. Then following this guide: https://wordpress.com/support/export/ select the EXPORT category and then import the resulting file to your new site following this guide: https://wordpress.com/support/import/

    Hopefully I’ve explained some of the options here rather than muddying the waters, but let me know if you have any other question about this.

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