Will everything stay the same but the address if I change it?
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I want to change the address of my blog, but I’m trying to make sure everything else will stay the same if I do, including stats information from my old blog, appearance and theme, and e-mail notifications to my subscribers. Will subscribers continue receiving posts from the new site, or will they have to re-subscribe? Thanks, this is time-sensitive for me so I appreciate your reply!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there. As far as I know if you change your blog address that’s all that changes. Your content and theme will stay exactly like it is, but only at the new address (the old address will be cleared of content). I’m not sure about subscribers, but if you notice they haven’t come with you during the change you can let us know here and staff can move them over for you.
However, people who have your blog bookmarked in their browsers will still go to the old address if they click on it and if anyone at any point linked to your blog those links will still lead to the old address. To get around that you’ll need to purchase the site redirect upgrade that will automatically redirect traffic from the old address to the new one.
Complete instructions here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/changing-blog-address/
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Thanks, so I should simply open a new topic in the forum when I’m ready to move my subscribers?
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You can open a new thread, or if this one is still open you can post here as well. Be sure to give both URLs, indicating to staff from which one and to which one your followers must be moved. Add “modlook” to the tags area and staff will know the thread requires their attention. However, I think your followers should make the move with you.
Just to be clear, make sure you don’t discard the old address when changing the existing one or you won’t be able to buy the Site Redirect or move followers. You can always set the old address to private once everything is done and then use it as a backup/test blog: http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/
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Okay, I’m considering just registering a custom domain instead of just shifting to another wordpress.com site. Would this be more cost-effective since purchasing a site redirect alone will cost $13 anyway, but the redirect is bundled together with a custom domain for $18?
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To clarify, if I get my own .com address, the site redirect is automatically built into that $18 package?
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a custom domain is $ 6.- / year – registrar + $ 13.- / year domain mapping = $ 18.- / year – an more class in the new name – in this case all your subscribers and content would be fine with nothing required for you to move them since you just add a new address for visitors to see – all the old links will keep working
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Okay, so that means I don’t have to purchase the site redirect separately when I go to register the custom name—that happens on its own? Also, I assume these extra steps being described on this page are irrelevant to me because I already have a wordpress.com site (“To map a domain to WordPress.com, you first have to make some changes at your domain registrar that will “tell” your domain where to point…., etc., etc.):
http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-existing-domain/
Finally, will old site stats still be visible, e.g. past week’s views, most popular posts of the month, etc.?
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The domain mapping is if you buy your custom domain somewhere else and then connect that domain to your WP.com blog.
It’s easier to just buy your domain directly form WP.com, then mapping is included and taken care of automatically. That’s the $18 one (depending on the extension you choose). The support doc you want is this one: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/register-domain/
Also see: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/
Finally, will old site stats still be visible, e.g. past week’s views, most popular posts of the month, etc.?
Yes, because your actual blog will not move at all. It will still be at it’s current WordPress.com URL, but visitors will see your custom domain in their browsers when they visit your site.
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That’s really helpful, thanks. If I set it to auto-renew, but I want to keep paying $8 for info privacy, can I set it to auto-renew the privacy setting too?
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I’m afraid I don’t know about that one, but I imagine you’d be able to auto-renew them both. I think that option is available for all upgrades, but I’ve never purchased it myself so I can’t tell you for sure.
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Okay, and also, does it matter if I’m doing more than just removing the “wordpress.com” part from the name? My transition will be more like moving from yourgroovydomain.wordpress.com to mygroovyspot.com.
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Makes no difference. There does not have to be any similarity whatsoever between your WP.com and your custom URLs. You’ll probably have to rebuild your search rankings from scratch, but I think that applies whether the URLs use the same word or not as it’s a new URL in either case.
While your actual blog will still be at the WP.com URL, that URL will be hidden and visitors will only see your custom one. Just make sure when you register your domain that you spell it exactly the way you want it. You’d be surprised how many people get that part wrong :)
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yes you will take a bit of a hit in search rankings for a while as the search engines need to get used to the new custom domain name and update their indexes – the redirects are 301 moved permanently so the search engines are told the content is not duplicated but just moved – should not be as bad as starting a new site
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How long will it take to get my search rankings back up? That’s a bit disappointing ‘cuz I do have a couple viral posts people have kept coming back to.
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There’s no definite answer to that. Search rankings are driven by content, so the more regularly you update your site with new original content the more regularly it will be indexed by Google. And if people keep sharing those particular posts I imagine their ranking will be restored fairly quickly, but be prepared for it to take a few weeks.
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I update it several times a week, so that’s taken care of. I think people are primarily finding my posts because they come up with them frequently when typing in some key search terms, not necessarily because people keep spreading it. I hope that doesn’t make a huge difference. However, one nice thing about one of the posts is that some places linking to it use my original blog name. I’m also keeping my original title in a sticky post so that people looking for the old name should turn up my new site in a search.
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Essentially if I understand this right, it will be like re-building my rank from scratch—Google will no longer take into account the fact that I got bajillions of views before. It will be as if I published the post yesterday. Is that accurate?
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