Using plugins on a free username.wordpress.com blog – upgrade possible?
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Dear wordpress forums,
I recently signed up for the free wordpress.com. I like the simple interface, and the fact you can manage and write posts simply using a web browser, and that it’s all very neat. However, after six posts I’ve been wondering how I can get more out of the blog – and I’ve spoken to a friend who advises getting myself acquainted with wordpress plugins. After an extensive google search I am so confused.
It seems I cannot use the plugin function simply through the web-based free .wordpress.com service?
And that to use the plugins I need to download a file, and create my own server?
I am prepared to do this, I just have NO idea how. And the wordpress.com site is a little bit confusing. If I try and download any codec or anything from the wordpress site it asks me to do so with a completely different account, so now I seem to have separate accounts on the wordpress.com site – one with my blog, and another that gets me into the ‘Doc’ section. It’s so confusing!
If anyone would be so kind, I’d really appreciate a very very basic guide through of how to transfer my current free blog to the point where I can see the ‘plugin’ option in the administrator panel. Is there a way I can do this whilst still keeping the blog I have now, and using all the same login details and everything?
Clarification would be so appreciated. Thanks in advance for anyone willing to clear this up for me! Forgive the niavety.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Yes, thanks so much husdal, I think I get what is going on now.
It seems much easier for me to just stay on wordpress.com, especially for now. However, if at any point in the future I decided to use wordpress.org for plugin benefits, would there be any way of transferring my current blog without losing content? Or is it a case of picking one of them and sticking with it?
Furthermore, if I stay with wordpress.com, does that strip me out of any SEO? Do wordpress.com blogs have any presence on google? At the moment google doesn’t seem to be bringing any of my posts up. Is there anything I can do about this? What would you advise? Stick with wordpress.com anyway?
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Going from wordpress.com to wordpress.org is easy, it’s just a matter of exporting your blog content from .com and importing it into .org.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-a-blog/#moving-to-wordpress-org
Ok, it’s a bit more than that, but nothing overwhelmingly difficult.As to SEO, wordpress.com blogs have excellent SEO, and if you know how to do it right, even better than .org blogs. Your blog is also on Google already: http://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Amrbettydraper.wordpress.com
I would start with wordpres.com, but if you are already now considering a .org upgrade in the future I would definitely buy a domain and map it to my wordpress.com blog.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/
Moving blogs and hosts is much easier when you have a domain. -
That’s great husdal, thanks for clearing this up for me!
How do you SEO with a wordpress.com blog though, if you can’t use plugins?!
I think I will stick with the wordpress.com one for now!
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If you know your SEO, you know that you don’t need plugins to do the job that you can do much better yourself:
– Write original, unique and authoritative content for your keywords
– Link only to authoritative sources for your keywords
– Use keywords in page/post titles
– Use keywords in names for images and media files
– Use the wordpress.com global tags for keyword exposure
– Use the post excerpt as a description with keywords -
Seriously, WP.com is seriously optimized for SEO. You will not be able to do as well with an independent blog and plugins. You will not.
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raincoaster, I’ve seen you and others make this point about the seo-ness of wp.com several times. Is there a snappy post/article that lays out the principles of SEO and then checks off how wp.com follows/exemplifies them?
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You can start with this video of a talk by Google’s Matt Cutts about WordPress and SEO:
http://publisherblog.automattic.com/2009/08/20/matt-cuts-google-seo/
In the above link, the 10-20% left to be taken care of by the blogger are the things Husdal listed above.
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I did explain the technical reasons a few times in the forum, but can’t find those posts now, sorry. The single biggest advantage is the Global Tag Pages, so whatever you do, don’t get thrown off them.
I have taught beginners and it’s not uncommon for a new blog to be #1 on Google for the name of its owner by the end of the first class and stay there, using WP.com. I’ve never seen it happen for WP.org, no matter what plugins you use. And I won a bet with a drupal developer about the SEO of WP.com. He had considered it ‘training wheels blogging’ but now he knows better.
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I’ll add this just FYI. There are many supposed SEO guru’s out there still standing at the pulpit evangelizing about needing meta keywords and how you will never get any real notice from the search engines if you don’t have them. There might be one or possibly two insignificant search engines that use them, but Google pays absolutely no attention to them at all. If someone tries to tell you different, point them at this official post on the google wemaster central blog where Matt Cutts finally, and officially puts this BS to bed: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html .
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@Andrew
If I may be so bold as to suggest that you visit my blog then I can provide what you need to learn in this post, and in others on my blog Basic SEO elements for bloggers
Hope this helps ;) -
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@TT thanks for the link to your fine post, and for the links in said post. It’s not quite what I was looking for, but I suspect that’s due to an idiosyncrasy of mine than to anything else. What I was looking for is a particular way of casting SEO principles for the wp.com blogger.
In other words, I’m having a “someone ought to write an article/post like this” moment. Sometimes, that leads to my finding an existing post.
Sometimes, it leads to my writing the post I think should exist. Example:
http://changingway.org/2009/10/19/wordpress-com-domain-mapping-email-and-android/
Most of the time, it leads to my deciding that the world can get on without the post in question. This is one of those times.Your post is probably better than the one I was envisaging. Thanks!
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