WordPress.com

1. mitch625
   Member
   Jan 10, 2012, 10:35 AM

   Hi,

   I have just recently subscribed to wordpress.com for $99 which includes purchasing mitch625.com through the registration process.

   I have made a pretty silly mistake by signing up to wordpress.com as this is hosted. I want to be self hosted so I can use custom themes from elegantthemes.com.

   Now, can anyone direct me in the right steps on how to do this. I am interested in using bluehost.com.

   Newbie here, so i apologise for this that may seem obvious ;).

   Let me know f you need any more information.

   Darryl

   The blog I need help with is mitch625.com.

2. thesacredpath
   Staff
   Jan 10, 2012, 11:20 AM

   Well, you have to set up the account with bluehost, install and configure the software from wordpress.ORG (bluehost has simple scripts through the cPanel that will install the software for you). Then you need to make a decision:

   If you ask for a refund on your $99, you will lose your domain name and it might be as long as 60 days before the registrar releases it so that you could get it again (assuming someone doesn't grab it before you can get it). If you get the refund, then you are going to have to get another domain name. You can register one through bluehost.

   You should be aware of the extra responsibilities that come along with self-hosting. You will be responsible for all installations, all upgrades, all backups and all troubleshooting. If something goes wrong, you have to figure it out and fix it. Sometimes installing a theme or a plugin will kill your site. This happens more often than people realize for a variety of reasons.

   Always keep up with the wordpress upgrades. Always do routine backups of your entire site including the database. That way if something goes terribly wrong, you can restore from a backup and be back up and running in a few hours. If you don't have backups, you could well lose everything. Also, do a full backup before any wordpress upgrade and I even do one before plugin and theme installations.

   WordPress has made self-hosting much easier than it was before, but there is still far more work involved and I cannot stress enough how important backups are, especially if your site gets completely wrecked by hackers or something you install kills it beyond repair.

   If you have content already on your site here, you can export it from here and then import it into the new site.

   http://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-a-blog/#moving-to-wordpress-org

3. mitch625
   Member
   Jan 10, 2012, 11:39 AM

   Hi thesacredpath,

   Thank you for your reply. I have just contacted wordpress about refunding me the $99 and cancelling the account.

   The 60 day wait is a bit of a bummer but I guess that will be the punishment for not fully understanding this ;).

   Do you think the best way to find out when my desired domain is available again is it periodically check godaddy.com and then just purchase it via bluehost?

4. thesacredpath
   Staff
   Jan 10, 2012, 11:45 AM

   You are welcome.

   Just do a "whois" type of search at somewhere like networksolutions.com or wherever and you can tell from there when it again becomes available.

5. askforanything
   Member
   Jan 11, 2012, 8:58 PM

   While you cannot transfer the domain name for 60 days from creation or from a previous transfer, this won't stop you from running your site under that domain name at Bluehost, or some other host.

   You may have discovered by now that all you need to do is change the nameservers at your registrar from ns1/ns2.wordpress.com to the ones that the new hosting company uses. That change usually goes public very quickly, so your site at the new host would start coming up right away, provided the old one is not cached [for some visitors] somewhere for a few hours (in your case the TTL is 48 hours, so while not likely, technically the caching could last 48 hours). You can see that traffic routes to your new site pretty quickly, though, by checking it through a non-caching web proxy like anonymouse.org or megaproxy.org.

   You can then transfer the domain name at your leisure after the 60 days, if you still want to transfer it, and as long as you are careful to not change nameservers in the process, the routing to your new hosted site will remain as is.

   Good luck.

   PS: Dreamhost gives you free domain privacy, unlike godaddy

6. timethief
   Member
   Jan 11, 2012, 9:19 PM

   You are correct. The nameservers control where traffic for the domain goes using DNS. If you are moving from WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress.org blog, you can enter the nameservers provided by your web hosting company to switch your domain to their hosting service. If there is no need to change registrars, then one can simply update the nameservers by following these instructions. http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/domain-management/#update-nameservers

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