TheNailChronicle.com has moved!! Tips to move from wordpress.org to wordpress.com

I’m back

Wow, so the last two months have been quite hectic!! I’ve been working in a new role and have just completed my Masters degree (WOOT!). Hence the lack of posts. Additionally, I moved my WordPress blog from WordPress.org (the free site) to WordPress.com. This took up a bit more time then I expected. The move has saved me money in the long run but I did find that I had a few issues along the way, so I thought I would share my tips for moving your site.

Why the move?

So before I discuss my tips for moving your site, I should probably tell you why I moved.
The first reason is for google analytics. If you know of Google Web Master Tools then you will know how powerful this set of tools can be, particularly when trying to get traffic to your site. What I found when I was using WordPress.com is that without upgrading to the business plan I couldn’t use most of Google’s webmaster features.

My second reason, sort of stems from the first. In that in order to use additional features such as plugins I would have to upgrade to the business plan. I did consider going ahead and upgrading. However, it does cost a lot of money. After quite a bit of research, I found that for what I wanted to it would be far more economical to move to WordPress.org.

What is the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?

The key difference is that whilst both are free to use WordPress.org requires you to either self-host or use a hosting solution. I would recommend using a hosting product that already supports WordPress sites. This makes the move far easier and I found set up to be quite easy. Check out the WordPress host site guidelines for more info: https://wordpress.org/hosting/

I choose to use BlueHost.com as my host. Just be careful when you sign up as they will try to sell you a heap of expensive add-ins that in my opinion are just not necessary. However, on a whole, they ended up being cheaper than what I was paying to WordPress.com particularly as I purchased a three-year plan.

If you’re just starting out and are looking for something that is entirely free I would begin with WordPress.org. Worse case you can move across if required.

Tips for moving your site

Guides
Firstly I recommend reading the moving guide a few times before you start. There are a few prerequisites that need to be completed in sequence.

• The main guide can be found here: https://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-from-self-hosted-wordpress-to-wordpress-com/
• However, if you find that you are having issues check out this page: http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-properly-move-your-blog-from-wordpress-com-to-wordpress-org/
• Worse case, a quick google will generally find the answer.

Site Transfer

The site export and import tools are incredibly useful. However, I found it took about three rounds to move everything across. If you find pages/content missing, it might be worth repeating this step.

Images

Sadly I just couldn’t get all of my images to transfer over. This meant I have had to go through many of my posts and find which images are missing.

Comment Settings

This is one of the most annoying issues I had. I couldn’t work out why my posts wouldn’t allow people to comment. This was until I found a setting that would disable comments after 28 days. This also meant that I didn’t detect the issue straight away. This setting can be found under settings -> discussion.

Reference Material

List of all of the references I have mentioned above:

WordPress.com: https://wordpress.com/
WordPress Beginner: www.wpbeginner.com/
WordPress.org:  https://wordpress.org/
Suggested hosting sites: https://wordpress.org/hosting/
Bluehost: https://www.bluehost.com/

Comment Below if you have any tips for moving your WordPress site