Upgrade free .com site with WordPress or get hosting and domain elsewhere?
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Hey there-
My Goal: I want to turn my current free .com site into a self hosted site with as little changes done to my site as possible. As in I don’t want to have to rebuild it from the start because I get a new domain but it is important to me to become self-hosted.So, is it wise to just upgrade using WordPress and have them host the site and supply the domain? It seems like the most straightforward route to have my wordpress.com site become a self-hosted site.
Or should I use Bluehost or Siteground for domain/hosting? If I do that will I have to start over building my site or can I somehow connect/replace my current .wordpress.com domain with my new domain?
What is best in the long run? I am new to this so any advice is very much appreciated!
Thank you
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
I’d be glad to help!
The most important question here is – do you want to maintain your WordPress installation (including plugins, upgrades, etc) yourself? If so, self-hosting is the way to go with a web hosting provider of your choice.
However – if ease of use, stability, direct support (such as this forum!) is important, I’d highly recommend upgrading your existing blog with WordPress.com directly. Not to mention the upgrade would be much simpler than exporting your blog to a new installation.
That is not to say you won’t get any support from external hosting companies – but they may not be able to offer you in-dept product support like the folks here do.
With that said, if you really want to self-host – you could probably give it a try. You can buy a domain name from a neutral domain provider and maybe purchase a short duration hosting to test waters before you jump all in. This way, you can still come back to upgrade your existing blog without having to cleanup anything =)
Cheers.
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I have not added plugins yet, I am waiting to pay for domain and hosting before adding. I also want to monetize. I want to do everything myself.
I really want to go the simplest route with the best support. I don’t want to sacrifice quality for the site or go the easy route now and find out later that it wasn’t wise to go with WordPress for hosting and domain though. Is there risk in this?
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I definitely understand your concerns.
Based on your requirements, it’s very likely you’d want to get the Business plan (for plugin support alone!) – it’s basically self-host without all the pain and trouble. All paid plans come with a 30-day refund policy as mentioned here:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/refunds/If you choose to get the domain name with WordPress.com too – and if for whatever reason you want to get a refund within those 30 days, you’ll get the refund minus the cost of domain name registration – fair enough right? :)
With that said, that’s only for a month – after that, there are no refunds if you change your mind.
This would be the most simple route to upgrade your blog and allows you to get started immediately (right now if you wish!).
If, let’s say you want to self-host WordPress elsewhere – you’ll need to install it yourself, configure it yourself, point your domain name (registered elsewhere I guess?) yourself, keep it maintained (i.e perform version upgrades), etc.
All of this is easy for those who are familiar and are wanting to do it themselves – the problem comes when one of the step fails. What happens when an upgrade doesn’t work properly? What happens if a plugin breaks something in your site?
Basically you’ll be stuck – there will be some support from WordPress.org forums (they’re just as nice as the folks here!), but your web hosting company won’t be able to assist you with as much detail since it’s not their product and is very little they can do.
Hence, I’d say go with WordPress.com and you won’t be disappointed.
P.S, I’m not a staff member, so I guess you have a third party opinion :)
Cheers.
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Hi @theautoimmuneequestrian, the information @aaadude has given is helpful. I would just add, if you’ll let us know why you want to self host we can maybe have a clearer understanding of what you’re after, and be able to point you in the right direction.
I want to do everything myself.
If the main reason is that you really want to do support and maintenance and what not yourself, that’s a fine reason to go self hosted. You can also transfer the site yourself using these steps:
http://move.wordpress.com — or you could have the Guided Transfer team do it for you. If you suspect you’ll want to do that, just bear in mind you’ll want to pick a compatible host.I really want to go the simplest route with the best support.
Self hosted does typically mean you are using community resources to help yourself. It’s a bit of a DYI endeavor. Or you can hire a company to take care of the things you don’t want to do.
Just note that WordPress.com is a service (with a paid support team), and WordPress.org (self-hosted, self-maintained, self-supported) is free software. There isn’t a paid support team for it, but there is a fantastic community if you’re willing to work with them. I’ve personally used both.
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