WordPress.com

1. hockeynarrative
   Member
   Jul 1, 2011, 9:56 AM

   Hello,

   I have a blog on wordpress.com (hockeynarrative.com). I am thinking of moving hockeynarrative.com to a different platform and exporting all content to that new platform. And I am looking at the Site Redirect service that wordpress.com offers.

   My questions are:

   —as I will be using the same custom domain at the new platform, do I redirect wordpress.hockeynarrative.com to hockeynarrative.com? Or, do I redirect to the new un-customized domain name at the other platform (like wordpress.com, the other platform allows you to use your own domain)?

   —at some point (presumably after the transferred content is indexed by Google and others at the new platform) after you do the redirect, do you then go back and delete the content that you have on wordpress.com?

   Any feedback on these questions would be appreciated!

   The blog I need help with is hockeynarrative.com.

2. hockeynarrative
   Member
   Jul 1, 2011, 9:58 AM

   Sorry, I noticed that the phrase "un-customized domain name" in the original post may be confusing.

   What I mean is, do I redirect to newblogplatform.hockeynarrative.com, or do I redirect to hockeynarrative.com?

3. airodyssey
   Member
   Jul 1, 2011, 12:08 PM

   Hi. If all you want to do is make sure visitors going to hockeynarrative.com are directed to your website (wherever it is hosted), you don't need to buy any redirect upgrade because the address would stay the same*. All you have to do is make sure the nameservers for hockeynarrative.com point to the right place (your new hosting provider).

   The site redirect upgrade would be more useful if you were to redirect users from one address to the other, for example from hockeynarrative.wordpress.com to hockeynarrative.com. Or you could simply replace your existing content hosted by WordPress.com with a brief message indicating your new address.

   * Provided that the links structure remains the same (yyyy/mm/dd/name-of-post/). For more information, ask at http://wordpress.org/support/

4. hockeynarrative
   Member
   Jul 2, 2011, 3:53 AM

   Hi airodyssey,

   Thanks for your reply. Well, the thing is, I assume that I DO want to redirect users from hockeynarrative.wordpress.com to hockeynarrative.com. Because, when I (potentially) move to the new platform, hockeynarrative.com will no longer be associated with my wordpress blog but with the new blog. Or, if I have had my own domain since the inception of my hockeynarrative blog, are you saying that this is not necessary?

   And, as I want to transfer all my posts to the new platform, I want to maintain the page rank associated with all those posts. Is that what the Site Redirect service is supposed to accomplish?

   That is the main thing that I am concerned with: not losing page rank etc. I assume that the posts that I transfer would not have the identical url on the new platform as they had on wordpress.com. I assumed that the Site Redirect accounted for that (for every post?).

   Airodyssey or anyone else who could further shed some light on this...I would appreciate it. Also, regarding the question about eventually deleting the blog at wordpress.com...is that necessary and/or recommended?

5. auxclass
   Member
   Jul 2, 2011, 4:07 AM

   If you have always had hockeynarrative.com then nobody should be going to hockeynarrative.wordpress.com and the redirect should not be necessary. If you had hockeynarrative.wordpress for a while before getting the domain hockeynarrative.com and mapping it then the redirect would be good.

   If you use the standard WordPress.COM email notification then you will need to have your subscribers resubscribe to your site.

   DON'T DELETE THE OLD WordPress.COM SITE!!!!!!!! Deleting the site kills the name and it can NEVER be used again - just save it. You can do one of two things set it to Private to get rid of duplicate content or clean out the content but leave a notice on the front page that you have moved and have a click on the new address thing.

6. hockeynarrative
   Member
   Jul 3, 2011, 8:41 AM

   Thanks for the response auxclass.

   However, I am not completely sold on the all the suggestions here for the simple fact that posts transferred to a new blog platform will not have the IDENTICAL url.

   I don't know if the Site Redirect service accounts for this. If anyone else has input on this, please let me know. Otherwise, I will wait until Monday and send the question to support.

7. thesacredpath
   Member
   Jul 3, 2011, 9:13 AM

   The site redirect will redirect to like URLs. If the URL structure at the new platform is different, then there is no reason to get the redirect since the URLs it will try to redirect to at the other end are not going to exist and will return 404 file not found errors which will cause even more problems than you are going to have already.

   If the new platform has a URL redirect function then you can manually enter all the old URLs and set the redirects to go to the proper page. If they do not, and there is no sort of plugin then you are simply hosed.

   There are redirect plugins for wordpress.ORG sites, but I take it you are moving away form wordpress since you did not mention going self-hosted. The problem with redirect plugins though is that you have to enter EVERY old URL. If you have a lot of posts that can be a bunch of work. So far the most I have had to do for a client was 500. It took four days to log all the old ones, get the corresponding new ones and then enter all of them and test things (and make the inevitable corrections.

   With all the 404 errors that moving to a new platform with different URLs you can expect your site to take a pretty heavy hit with the search engines.

8. hockeynarrative
   Member
   Jul 4, 2011, 3:41 AM

   Thanks thesacredpath. You provided exactly the information that I was looking for.

9. thesacredpath
   Member
   Jul 4, 2011, 5:19 AM

   You are welcome.

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