Start designing new site without migrating domain?
-
My company wants to upgrade our website, and part of that upgrade is to migrate to WordPress. In the meantime, we don’t want to overwrite our existing website or take it down until the design is finalized. If I enter our domain information now, will our current website stay the same until I publish? Or should I start with a dummy domain until I’m ready to connect to our real domain?
I want to make sure I get this right because we plan on buying a premium theme, and I don’t want to have to buy it twice if it thinks that I’m trying to apply it to an additional site. We’re also very new to WordPress and want to have the time to get the design figured out without worrying about overwriting our current website.
Any advice on the migration process and handling theme/plug-in purchases is much appreciated.
Thanks!
-
You certainly can get your site set up here before switching your domain over!
When you sign up for a new site, we give you a free subdomain (*.wordpress.com) that you can use to start building your new site.
Here’s a guide that will help you migrate your site to WordPress.com:
https://transferto.wordpress.com/Note that you will need a paid plan at the time you want to map or transfer your domain to the site. You can compare the different plan levels here:
https://wordpress.com/pricing/ -
So after building on the subdomain, I’ll be able to transfer to our real domain using the same WP site? Are there any issues with links or premium theme transfer that I should be aware of?
Thank you!
-
So after building on the subdomain, I’ll be able to transfer to our real domain using the same WP site?
Correct.
Think of it as putting a new cover on an existing book. It’s still the same book. It just looks different from the outside.
In the same way, when you add your own domain, it will just change the address the site displays in the browser, but won’t otherwise change the site itself in any way.
Are there any issues with links or premium theme transfer that I should be aware of?
I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean here. What issues regarding links are you concerned about?
Regarding installing your own theme, you can find instructions for that here:
https://wordpress.com/en/support/themes/uploading-setting-up-custom-themes/
The only possible issue there is if your theme is incompatible with our hosting setup, or with another plugin on your site, but there’s no way to really know that until you install the theme and see whether or not it works :)
Keep in mind that we can only provide support for themes we make. If you install a third-party theme made by someone else, you’d need to contact the developer for that theme directly should you need any help with using it. This also applies to any plugins you install on your site.
-
Totally makes sense. The concerns about links was from outside research about third-party themes, so no more worries there.
Thank you!
- The topic ‘Start designing new site without migrating domain?’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 