WordPress.com is a wonderful platform and it provides users with an option to create free blogs without spending a single cent. However, a time comes when you might want to move to your own domain name which is a continuance of your WordPress.com blog.
A few days ago Jeff posted some links on steps to move from the Blogger platform to WordPress and now Amit Agarwal from Digital Inspiration has written a comprehensive guide on moving from a WordPress.com domain to a WordPress.org domain.
You will find lots of posts which are similar to this one, but I found this guide to be comprehensive and to the point, so if you are planning to move to your own domain now or in the near future, don’t forget to bookmark the article.
How to Migrate your Blog from WordPress.com to a Personal Domain
good article, even though in my humble opinion, I would not recommend google apps, or the other hosting providers he recommends. I’ve had issues with bluehost in the past, same with dreamhost, so I don’t agree with his personal recommendations, but otherwise, great article.
although I do have to admit, switching my domain from godaddy to google apps for the sake of hiding your domain contacts, is something to consider, seeing as how godaddy charges a $6 fee for that. doesn’t google apps charge you too though? or can you switch your domain to them without using the advertisement crapola? I call it crapola because I’ve never seen one single cent from advertising on a blog, not one single cent, so I don’t believe in it, unless yer a celebrity or something.
@bubazoo – I believe that many web hosting registrants provide with free privacy. I had registered my domain at Dreamhost, which provides me with privacy, however, it has a flat charge of $9.99. Sites like GoDaddy and others mint money from these additional services and provide discounts on domain registrations, that is my experience so far.
As far as hosting, I have have had good experience with Dreamhost, and continue to host my image cache server there, however, I moved the main site off DH to a VPS as DH is not that good a shared hosting when it comes to serving dynamic pages to a lot of users, and I believe that it is case with other shared hosting services.
The thing here is that once you start getting 8-10K users per day (sometimes lesser), you need to move to a VPS, again that is based on my experience.
@keith that’s where building a LAMP comes handy.
You are right, the guide is comprehensive as well as to the point. A bookmark and a tweet for this one. Thanks for sharing. My recommended hosting partners are HostGator, LunarPages and Bluehost.
The guide is great. I’m lucky I was not to far along with my site before I decided to go with wordpress.org with my own domain. I use Hostmonster by the way.
Thank for this guide but I just have one question. I have one registered domain in Google Apps, would I be required to pay for another fee if I want to transfer the domain to a different service?
Okay I have another question so it’s just not one 😀 What can you recommend as a hosting service?
Thanks!
Sonoma thanks you liked the guide, for a list of recommended web hosts you can visit this link http://wordpress.org/hosting/
I don’t understand the differences between the two really, I’ve never bothered. They’re both official, right? Boy I love WordPress, it has opened up a huge world and gives non techie people to have their own site, and manage it! Thanks to the creator!!
@Laura – WordPress.com provides users with an option to create free blogs without paying anything, for eg keithdsouza.wordpress.com.
On the other hand WordPress.org provides users with the same WordPress software which can can download and use on their own personal domain like http://techie-buzz.com. In this case too WordPress in itself is free, however users have to pay for hosting and other costs which for maintaining the site.
I think WP.com is way too aggressive in assuming that as soon as you put one link on a blog you are there only to make links for seo. If I have 6 original posts they should bug off and not close my site because I add a couple links to a squidoo lens like they did. They gave it back after I called them on it but it should never have happened.
Migrating blogs is a big headache. I wish not to do this on my main blogs or on the blog that gets over 15k UV per day or that has over 1k internal pages. The time taken to do permanent 301 redirection for all pages will take ages.
I think wordpress.com is nice for me to create my new blog
I still don’t understand why you would want to download the wordpress software and use your own site for hosting/etc when you can use a free wordpress.com site. Are there way more widgets and features available to you, or are the benefits for true IT tekkies who can program all they want onto their own site AND add the best of wordpress? I just don’t get it. I’m sticking the free, and find that it works good for me. I bought a godaddy domain name and forwarded it to my wordpress, so it’s all good.
WordPress.com is best for those who do not want to bother to search best hosting in the market. Even if they do so, they end up paying a lot. So wordpress.com is a good solution for this group.
Whereas some want their wordpress customized fully as per their needs, wordpress.org is perfectly for them.