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Want to change from free wordpress.com site to wordpress.org

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 10:56 am
by golfing girl
Hi
Have been using the free, wordpress .com for 7 years but need to be able to put in plugins and that is not an option with wordpress.com, so need to move my site to wordpress.org.
Has anyone had a similar experience? did you do it yourselves? or use someone to do it? Who did you use to host your new wordpress.org site? Any thoughts, most appreciated

Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 7:54 am
by JaneS
I am not an expert but if you can build your site yourself, you will know how it works, have more control and be able to amend and change without having to wait for a web designer, who maybe more interested in the design, look and feel of your site rather than the purpose it is intended for. However, it takes time which you may not have.

If your site is 7 years old, you may wish to consider an update with a new site/theme rather than migrate an old one. You can still keep your old site in operation while building your new one.

There are many hosting companies out there that offer managed Wordpress hosting, InMotion, Hostgator, WPEngine and SiteGround. I use SiteGround and find them excellent; you get what you pay for. I have SiteGround's Go Geek level of hosting and https for my website. Their customer service is exactly as the reviews say. I also like the fact that I could choose where the server hosting my website was located. I see little point, for example, in having the host server in US, if my market is in Europe. SiteGround will also migrate a site if you wish as will most host providers.

For my website, I use a Wordpress theme which runs on the Genesis framework. As you already use Wordpress.com, I do not think you will have too much of problem, but there is a learning curve.

Have a look at Alan Egan's Rent More Weeks website where you will find a good article on WordPress websites and he has an Wordpress offer on there too.

I hope this helps you.

Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 8:45 am
by FelicityA
Or, if you want something even simpler to do (and with excellent customer service - really - second to none!) have a look at promotemyplace.com I did not want to have to learn website building but needed what it is basically a cut and paste job into their range of templates. I have been with them since 2012, pay them £69/year and love their set up. You can add all sorts of widgets for free and they are currently setting up online booking in the beta testing stage.

Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 12:39 pm
by golfing girl
Thanks both,for your advice. I have decided to start a new wordpress site using Alan's advice

Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 3:20 pm
by SusanMay
Hi,

I'm half way through Alan's course and I would recommend it too. Quite fun actually! There will be lots of similar looking websites appearing at this rate. If you see a "just imagine" tab.... But you do build a site on Wordpress.com, not Wordpress.org so you can't add plugins (which is what I thought you wanted to do?). I'm hoping I can add widgets though but haven't got that far!

Susan

Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 4:03 pm
by JaneS
Glad I could help and ask if you get stuck. If there is one plugin to put on your site it's Wordfence as it protects your site from hackers and other nasties out there. I found out about it on this forum.

I would also compress images - clever app called Compress which takes the size of a 12mb image in size to down by about 87%. There is a free version which allows you to compress 12 images a day but the app costs €2.99 and I can compress as many images as I want to in a day. I use an DSLR and I shoot on high quality jpeg and the size of the image files are enormous, and if not compressed, they will slow the loading time of your site down. There is no affect to quality that the naked eye can pick up. Another lesson learned the hard way.

Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 4:49 pm
by SusanMay
Oops, ignore my remark above about Wordpress. I've just been looking at my new site and it is wordpress.org not .com and does seem to have Wordfence already installed so you learn something new.... The great thing about following Alan's course and being given a site to edit is that it is a bit like painting by numbers in that you don't need to know anything about Wordpress. But it's also a bit worrying that you can create a site and remain so ignorant! Well I can anyway :)

Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2017 5:39 pm
by JWK
I design Wordpress sites and our cottage website was built using Wordpress if you care to take a look. <a href="http://cavedale.co.uk" target="_Blank" >link</a>

Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2017 7:23 pm
by golfing girl
Many thanks JWK.
I would like to keep my wordpress.com site but have a booking and payment page

Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2017 7:52 pm
by JWK
golfing girl wrote:Many thanks JWK.
I would like to keep my wordpress.com site but have a booking and payment page
What is the link to your site because it wouldn't be to hard to migrate everything across. The only other thing you'd have to factor in is hosting which is about £3 a month and your domain name which will cost you about £15 a year.

At the time of building a Wordpress.org site there may be some premium plugins and theme to buy as well but just switching from Paypal to Stripe will save you more in a year.

When we switched over we ended up saving about £500 per year thereafter and I had to pay the plugin developer at the time to modify his booking plugin to suit our needs fully so it was money well spent in my opinion.

Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2017 7:58 pm
by golfing girl
My site is www.woodsidecottage.wordpress.com It is also linked to 2 others but as we are selling one cottage it is only Woodside that needs to have the facility of calendar with prices that you can take bookings from.

Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2017 8:10 pm
by JWK
golfing girl wrote:My site is www.woodsidecottage.wordpress.com It is also linked to 2 others but as we are selling one cottage it is only Woodside that needs to have the facility of calendar with prices that you can take bookings from.
If you are serious about changing your site and you like my design style, I'd most definitely be able to get you a very smart looking site that works. I'm just busy on another project at the moment which is my most ambitious to date https://www.peakdistrict.holiday

Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2017 8:24 pm
by golfing girl
Thanks