Moving on from WordPress.com
Take control of your website
Want to do more with WordPress?
Lots of people start their online experience by creating a “free” WordPress blog. While it represents a great value way to get going, if you use it seriously for a while you’re going to find WordPress limits the things you’ll be allowed to do. Soon you’ll start thinking about the wisdom moving to your own “self-hosted” website. Does it make sense to do that? Isn’t it really difficult to do? This article explains the pros and cons so you can make your own decision.
WordPress transfer service
We offer a WordPress transfer service to take care of all the details. We work with Blogger and other free sites as well. Why not give us a call or drop us a note?
Phone: +44(0)7767 238188 or use this form to contact us.
Why should I want to move?
If you can say yes to some of these, you’re candidate for running your own site
- You want some feature that WordPress don’t make available to their hosted sites eg a forum, some fundraising stuff
- You want a look that WordPress don’t offer eg a multi-column magazine look
- You want your own site style, not one shared by thousands of other WordPress users
- You want to have more than one domain name for one website
- You want a lot more control over how your information is presented
- You want each page on your site to have a different layout
- You want to display adverts without WordPress wanting to take their cut
- You want to use Google Adsense
- You want to run Javascript widgets
- You want your site to look like a website, not just like a weblog
- You want to sell stuff from your site
Why wouldn’t I want to?
There are downsides. You need to have these covered one way or another
- Running your own site, you’ll have to find more technical skills than you use at the moment, either yourself, or paying someone else to do the hard stuff
- You’d have to find and pay for your own web hosting provider. You need to make sure they have the facilities to run WordPress on their servers.
- You might even have to create your own database and upload your own WordPress software yourself.
- You’d have to find and upload your own plugins when you want to change things around.
- You’d have to take care of the regular upgrades yourself. You may not realise just how often WordPress itself is updated because you never get to see. And the various plugins get upgrades too.
- You’d have to take care of your own backups, or make sure your hosting provider does.
- We can help with all of these. We can either tell you what you need to do, or we can do it all for you. Your call.
Why shouldn’t I get WordPress to do this for me?
No reason at all – they’ll do a great job of transferring your blog site as-is onto a new server. But they won’t help you with any of the new functions you want to build into your site. You know, the reason why you’re moving it in the first place.
Nick Prior Designs WILL help you with all the new stuff, not just getting the existing website running on your new web host. So, if you want your site to work seamlessly on an iPhone, we can do that at the same time as moving your WordPress.com site. Same if you want some e-commerce. Or Google Analytics for tracking your visitors’ behaviour on your site. Or giving your site that magazine-style front page you’ve been hankering after ever since you started.
Do I have start all over again?
The good news is that you certainly won’t have to start all over again. You’ll be able to move all your posts, categories, pictures, comments and so on to your new site. You just export it all, arrange for the domain name to be moved to your new site, then import the exported data into the new site. All done.
OK, there’s a bit more to it than that, and it has been known for things to go wrong sometimes. That’s where we come in.
Sounds scary! Can you help?
Sure we can. We offer a WordPress transfer service to take care of all the details. We’ll manage the whole process starting by helping you arrange your own web hosting provider through to handing your new site back to you. of course, we’d also like to work with you on creating your new site’s appearance, identifying the best theme and plugin functionality to use, but you can use us for as much or as little as you choose.
What’s it all going to cost?
We’ll charge you £100 for a straightforward site transfer with no added bells and whistle. Your site, as-is, running on your new web host, just £100.
If you want us to help with any further changes then we’ll be pleased to provide an estimate for the work, Then when we know more about what you want to do, we’ll do a quotation so you know exactly where you stand. Just get in touch to get the ball rolling.
Get in touch
Why not get in touch to see how we can help you?
Phone: +44(0)7767 238188 or use this form to contact us
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