Who Else Wants To Switch From WordPress.com to WordPress.org?

You might have noticed how I’ve changed the blog recently. This is because I made the switch from a free hosted blog at wordpress.com to a self-hosted (at bluehost.com) one. Here’s the story.

I was doomed from day one. I settled for the wordpress.com blog instead of a self-hosted wordpress installation because it seemed much easier and I was lazy. I took the blue pill (which is the one that doesn’t free you from the matrix, btw). Hit the jump for a quick rundown of what I did.

Reasons For Switching

Among others and in no particular order:

• Crappy Social media integration. WordPress.com does not allow custom JavaScript anywhere on the site. Thus, adding social media buttons (other than the supported ones) only works with static anchor images which direct the users away from my site.
• No feedburner integration
• Hilarious pricing (if you want to host your blog on more than one domain, you pay 10$ per domain)
• Insufficient analytics features. The wordpress.om analytics show nothing expect for the number of hits.
• No custom plugins.
• No custom theme modifications (except for css) and small selection of themes

How to Switch

I won’t go into detail on how to perform the switch since other bloggers have done so well and extensively. Check out these posts to get you started:

• How to Migrate your Blog from WordPress.com to a Personal Domain
• Migrating from WordPress.com to WordPress.org
• Six Easy Steps DIY: Move Your WordPress.com Blog
• How To – Move From WordPress.com To WordPress.org
• Migrating from wordpress.com to wordpress.org or self-hosting

Things to Consider

• Comments by wordpress.com users will no longer include their Avatar or link back to their blog.
• You will probably waste hours of time configuring your new blog
• Blog name/description/settings are all lost
• All wordpress.com features that have you include a shortcode (such as [digg=someurl] or [tweetmeme] or

  [/sourcecode]
  

  ) will initially not work.

• Embedded youtube videos won’t work.

Things to Take Care Of

• After you’re done, make sure to have your old wordpress.com (yourname.wordpress.com) link to your new one
• Install a nice theme (hundreds of themes are available)
• Configure your sidebar just like it was
• Install the Webmaster Tools Verification plugin and reconfigure webmaster tools settings for your new blog
• Activate Akismet and enter your wordpress.com API key
• Install WP-Stats and enter your wordpress.com API key
• Create a FeedBurner account and install and configure the FD Feedburner Plugin
• I also installed these other fantastic plugins:
  • AddToAny share button
  • After the Deadline (as seen on wordpress.com)
  • Broken Link Checker (as seen on wordpress.com)
  • Digg Digg interactive social media buttons
  • Feed Stats
  • Google XML Sitemaps
  • Greg’s SEO
  • Syntax Highlighter Evolved (as seen on wordpress.com; so you don’t have to chance your code blocks)
  • W3 Total Cache
  • Wickett Twitter Widget (as seen on wordpress.com)
  • Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
  • Zemanta

If you have any questions about any of the above steps, please let me know.

All of this being said, it’s been a rough day but I’m happy that I moved and I’m very content with the result. Now this page can grow :)

No related posts.