Switching from self hosted to wordpress hosted
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I work for a company that is self-hosting a blog as part of our estore. We are thinking about switching from Self-hosting to wordpress.com hosting with the business package.
Our blog is at http://www.pens.com/blog
I have several questions.
1. How do we still keep the blog address as http://www.pens.com/blog? My internal customer is concerned about messing up our SEO if we change the url of the blog.
2. We have a theme that we’ve customized for our content, how do I get my theme onto the wordpress.com servers?
Thanks,
Wade Courtney
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I suggest start by reading this support doc so you are crystal clear on the differences between wordpress.COM hosted blogs and self hosted WordPress.ORG installs. https://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
re: mapping an existing domain
WordPress.com provides free blogs and hosts them free of charge. There are no bandwidth charges. All WordPress.com blogs come with 3000 megabytes (~3 GBs) of space for storing uploaded files and images. Free features are listed here https://en.wordpress.com/features/
See here for details of all 3 plans http://store.wordpress.com/bundles/ offered by WordPress.com.
Premium bundle details http://store.wordpress.com/plans/premium/
Business bundle details http://store.wordpress.com/plans/business/Note that each upgrade bundle applies to a single blog only and is for a single year only when it is due to be renewed.
We all pay in full for every upgrade at the time of purchase. Make sure you read the comparison very closely so you know exactly what the restrictions and limitations on WordPress.COM blogging are: http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
Read Important Notes Before Upgrading http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/#important-notes-before-upgrading
WordPress.com does not accept domain transfers but mapping an existing domain is possible. Domain mapping of an existing domain URL that you already own and purchased elsewhere is not done free of charge. You will have to renew the domain name purchase where you made it and the domain mapping purchase here every year.
Mapping an existing domain costs $13. annually and a domain name purchase and domain mapping are included in the Premium upgrade bundle.
In order to map to a domain one must have an underlying .wordpress.com sub-domain blog to map from and it does not matter what that underlying .wordpress.com URL is. It does not have to match the domain URL.
If you have registered a .wordpress.com blog you log in as Admin under the exact same username account that registered the WordPress.COM blog, and as you own a domain URL already, you can see here for mapping an existing domain. http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-existing-domain/
It can take between 24 – 72 hours for domain name propagation to take place throughout the internet. You can view the DNS changes here > http://www.whatsmydns.net/ What’s important during that stage is to be patient.
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We do not any have metadata access to WordPress.COM blogs. at access only available on wordpress.ORG installs.
WordPress.COM is a multi-user blogging platform. Our blogs share a common architecture and we bloggers cannot access metadata. See these for help:
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2012/08/02/top-5-site-title-tag-tips/
Creating an effective blog tagline http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2009/06/22/creating-an-effective-blog-tagline/That being said it’s of interest to note meta titles, meta descriptions and keyword metatags are not required for SEO purposes and Matt Cutts of Google has said that as far back as 2009. Search engines are focused on keywords in your content. What is important is keywords found in your content. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2012/03/01/revisiting-keywords-and-tags/
WordPress.com SEO is very good. If you had two identical sites, one hosted here and one self-hosted using that same plugin, the site hosted here would have better SEO than the self-hosted site. WordPress.com has huge SEO and you get the benefit of that by having your site as a “subdomain” here.
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/seo-and-your-blog/
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/seo-on-wordpress-com/To verify blog ownership of a WordPress.com blog with the major search engines you must use this process > http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/
Note: Even if you do not verify the blog the content will be indexed by search engines so don’t feel panicky about this please.Note also that WordPress.com automatically supplies sitemaps for our blogs to search engines – we do nothing. http://en.support.wordpress.com/sitemaps/#xml-sitemaps-for-search-engines
There is no FTP access and no blogger installed plugin capability on any free hosted WordPress.com blogs.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/ftp-access/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/plugins/Note also that permalink structure cannot be changed on wordpress.COM hosted blogs.
re: adding new themes
There is no upgrade you can purchase here that provides FTP access and the ability to install plugins and or any third party themes.
If you want FTP access and to install plugins or third party themes into a site then you will have to hire a web host http://wordpress.org/hosting/ and set up your own WordPress.org install. -
Was this a copy and paste answer?
I said in my original post that we were going to be getting the business package and my question about url mapping was very specific.
Most of the stuff that copied and pasted is irrelevant to me. And didn’t answer the two specific questions that I asked.
Thanks for the link to the comparison though, that will be useful.
Thanks
Wade
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re: customizing theme found here https://wordpress.com/themes/
See here for details on purchasing the annually renewable Premium bundle http://store.wordpress.com/plans/premium/ that contains a custom design upgrade required for CSS editing: Custom design – Frequently Asked Questions
http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/#frequently-asked-questions
http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/editing-css/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/custom-fonts/After purchasing the premium bundle up grade you can use this link https://en.forums.wordpress.com/forum/css-customization#postform so you can copy and paste your text into a thread that will appear in the CSS Forum where you will get the help you need.
re: moving content
See https://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-from-self-hosted-wordpress-to-wordpress-com/ -
as part of our estore.
WordPress.com blogs cannot be equipped for eCommerce transactions unless they have the $299. per year annually renewable Business upgrade. https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/ecommerce-is-now-available-on-wordpresscom?replies=1
See here for ecommerce details http://en.support.wordpress.com/ecommerce/Otherwise, provided you are selling only what you yourself make or a service that you personally provide you have two options.
(1) Know that the only instructions that will work for posting a PayPal donation button on a WordPress.com blog are found here http://en.support.wordpress.com/paypal/(2) If you set up an Ecommerce site somewhere else online you can create a custom menu http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/ and include a custom link to that site in it. http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/#adding-custom-links
Some bloggers create a contact form and after the people have made a PayPal donation they provide the link to a private page for downloading files. Maybe that will work for you.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/page-visibility/The only advertising program at WordPress.com is called WordAds and it’s for blogs on their own domains.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/
http://en.wordpress.com/apply-for-wordads/Advertising outside of WordAds at WordPress.com is not allowed.
http://support.wordpress.com/advertising/ Here’s what gets a blog suspended:
http://wordpress.com/types-of-blogs/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/advertising/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/affiliate-links/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/suspended-blogs/
http://en.wordpress.com/tos/1. WordPress.com allows bloggers to insert text affiliate links within post and page content to most third-party affiliate programs, provided they are not the primary content of the site in question.
2. Image affiliate links in posts and pages and any banners, affiliate links in sidebar or footer widget areas, are still considered to be advertising and are not allowed on WordPress.com blogs.
NOTE: Aside from the plugins I linked to for Ecommerce blogs with the Business upgrade only, there is no FTP access and no blogger installed plugin capability on any free hosted WordPress.COM blogs, and there is no upgrade you can purchase here that changes that reality.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/ftp-access/ -
My reply crossed at the same time as your second message.
So what I hear you saying is that we can’t use our custom theme.
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1. How do we still keep the blog address as http://www.pens.com/blog? My internal customer is concerned about messing up our SEO if we change the url of the blog.
BY purchasing annually renewal upgrades for mapping an existing domain. See above at https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/switching-from-self-hosted-to-wordpress-hosted?replies=6#post-2431541
2. We have a theme that we’ve customized for our content, how do I get my theme onto the wordpress.com servers?
There is FTC access and adding new themes is not possible. You can only use these themes https://wordpress.com/themes/ See above at https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/switching-from-self-hosted-to-wordpress-hosted?replies=6#post-2431542
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Oops! I note a missing word above. There is no FTC access and adding new themes is not possible. https://en.support.wordpress.com/themes/#uploading-custom-themes
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Our current blog is strictly for SEO and marketing. We already have an estore.
Thanks for all of the information.
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I see we have overlapping comments. I wanted to make sure you were aware of the whole nine yards, so to speak. That way so you could bookmark this thread if you wished to, rather than creating new ones. Best wishes with your move.
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