I transferred from wordpress.com to .org and surprisingly didn’t delete my page.
Surprise! I’ve redesigned my blog! I was sick at home and had way too much time on my hands. I focused all my energy and spent what felt like an eternity transferring from wordpress.com to wordpress.org. I’m surprised that I didn’t fuck it all up and accidentally deleted my homepage. First, here are all the reasons why I transferred:
- I hated the ads on my page. I didn’t make money from them. Like what were they even here for.
- I was looking for more options to design a modern page.
- I’ve literally thrown money out of the window for a domain (benleander.com) and web space for a year, and wanted to finally use it.
- Also, I wanted to feel cool and independent. D’uh.
In the end, I successfully transferred all my content. If you’re interested in all the steps I had to take, let me know. However, there are many great tutorials already available. If you’re thinking about transferring yourself, here is everything that will go wrong in chronological order:
- The Import/Export tool will crash a million times for no apparent reason other than the universe hating you.
- When it finally works, you will have more duplicates of your media files than the NSA.
- Your theme will not transfer and you’ll have to do your layout all over again. However, you’ll find out there are much more themes (and plugins, finally!) available for self-hosted sites.
- You won’t find a regular follow button, decide to add e-mail subscription until you eventually find this helpful tip.
- Your server might cause problems with the PHP WordPress is using. The totally obvious and not at all random solution to this problem is that you’ll have to downgrade your PHP.
- You will now have a real Jetpack in your interface and won’t know what to do with all its features. Also, you won’t understand the WordPress.org interface in general.
- You will need to take another step to move your followers because who doesn’t love it when things are more complicated than they have to be.
- You will need to write a post in a fricking forum to move your stats along with you unless you enjoy having zero views.
- You will need to pay fucking WordPress.com to redirect your viewers to the new URL because they didn’t already make enough money from the ads on your page.
I have never done anything like this but with the help of the internet, I succeeded. If I can do it, you can do it too! If you’re still reading this, I’d love it if you could leave me some feedback on my new layout. Please be kind. I spent hours yelling at my computer. Please tell me if the site is pictured correctly, if you’ve received a regular notification of this post and let me know of any errors you encounter. Thanks!
BenLeander
floatinggold
I was so wrapped up in “ME” that I forgot to say that I like your new layout. It all looks rather professional (not that the other one didn’t). I think once I click on a post, the main image takes a few seconds to load (it’s just white space), but that’s ok. Also, I just noticed that the comment conversation between you and Kristi kind of bugged on you. When you open it on the actual site, you’ll see that the last comments are 1 letter per line (i.e. hard/ impossible to read).
Other than that, I think it looks great.
Ben Leander
Thank you so much for the feedback! One question: Did you see this post like you regularly do (in the Reader, I assume)?
I actually should downsample all the images on my blog to make it load faster. WordPress.org actually offers a feature to downsample the photos a little bit but it’s way more effective if I do it myself with Photoshop beforehand. I was just lazy most of the times.
For the other comment problem, I currently have no solution. This is a bug of this layout and it annoys me a LOT. Only solution would be to disable nested comments but I like to engage with the people taking the time to comment. I will have to figure something out 🙂
Thank you!
floatinggold
Of course! The nested comments are the best.
Actually, I just happened to click on your name and that’s how I found your blog. I don’t like reading things in the Reader.
floatinggold
Thank you for doing this.
I’ve been wondering about this for a while. In most cases, those who transferred had to undergo a lot of stress before everything started working correctly. I’m glad to see that you were able to transfer your stats (didn’t know that was possible).
I’m going to have to bookmark all your links (and/or your post) for the future.
Now my question is: “Why did you switch to .org?” Why didn’t you just upgrade to the “Business Plan” in .com? I’d be interested to know pros/cons.
Ben Leander
I found so many helpful tips on this ‘journey’, I just had to share them! I just put my ‘trainwreck’ twist on it all^^ If you know, what to do you can probably do all of this in a couple of hours, but if you have to look for resources, it takes days.
I was able to transfer everything except for the ‘Likes’ on the post because I have a new system allowing Facebook users to like stuff now. Also, old comments will have a bunch of errors with special characters but that’s an issue I cannot correct anymore, unfortunately. (Maybe I’m just stupid but I tried)
Why .org and not the Business plan. Well, there’s many reasons:
1. I wanted to use the webspace I already had.
2. I kinda hated being dependent on wordpress.com so much.
3. The restrictions in Themes and customization of .com are insane. With .org I have access to (almost) every .php and .css and could, basically, do anything.
4. Business Plan of course is the ‘easier’ route but I don’t have enough followers/views to be able to pay for it with ads.
5. Furthermore, if there are ads on my site, I want to make money from it, not my provider.
6. I feel like the .com upgrades are not the money’s worth when you have the option of switching to .org and enjoying a lot more freedom then. (Webspace and URLs are much cheaper with independent providers)
Was there anything else? Well, one point I kinda shouldn’t mention is that with .org I was able to remove WP credits. But Pssst! (You’re not supposed to do that)
I hope that wasn’t to much/too little info and I hope your thirst for information was adequately satisfied. (Don’t ask me, why I suddenly started talking like the princess from England lol)
xoxo
Ben
floatinggold
I think the business plan gets rid of the WP marking, too.
Your point by point explanation has been very helpful. I should really start making a plan of how I would like to proceed.
Ben Leander
If you decide to go for .org, let me know how your ‘journey’ went 🙂
floatinggold
I sure will.
renudepride
Congratulations and thanks for the advice! Naked hugs!
Ben Leander
Thank you for leaving a reply – always welcome 🙂
Kristi McAllister
It’s fantastic! I love everything about it! And I wonder if I didn’t have a follow button because of that very little glitch?! Remember when you couldn’t find it? I can’t find it either hahaha. Nice job, Ben. You’re braver than I am! I hired it out!
benleander
Wow thanks for the feedback! Glad to hear you like it 😊 true, I couldn’t find the follow button on your blog 🙈 you could try it with the tip I posted so regular WordPress.com members can follow you. its actually pretty easy.
I wouldn’t say I’m brave – Web design was actually part of my education but I never really excelled at it haha. What was the reason you switched from.com to Org?
Kristi McAllister
I was actually with Wix before I switched to WP.org. I never started with .com because I had read how hard it was to transfer and monetize. So straight to .org I went. And my designer learned just how much of a pain in the ass I really am haha.
benleander
A client of mine actually wants me to build a site with wix. Is it not a good provider? I wanna convince him to go with wp anyways now that I know how it works^^
Yeah monetization would be the next step then 😂
Kristi McAllister
For a beginner, I loved it. It was soooo easy to customize and build. But it was so limited in features etc. I switched to WP kicking and screaming, but I’m so glad I did it. I have a friend whose ex husband is a web designer and she ONLY uses Wix. Unless he’s a novice, I would encourage him to go WP.org!
Ben Leander
I guess WordPress has a lot of potential if whatever you’re doing is growing and becoming ‘more’. I really don’t wanna try another website builder so I’ll definitely convince him to go wp. 😁
Claudia
I think your site looks great! I myself don’t want to invest more money in my blog than I have to, but I know I’m missing out on a couple of great perks (like plugins). Your site is easy to navigate. And that’s what your followers want. Congrats!
benleander
Thanks so much for your wonderful comment. It means a lot and also I now know that notifications via the WordPress reader still work 😊 if you ever think about switching you can always contact me. There’s a couple of things that make it easier if you know them beforehand 🤔