Explanations

Self-Hosting Your WordPress Blog

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I just finished a conversation with a friend who has had a WordPress blog hosted for free on WordPress.com for some time now, but is wanting to move to a self-hosted WordPress installation for a variety of reasons, most notably the limitations WordPress.com imposes on your ability to monetize your blog.

The biggest misconception he had about moving to a self-hosted installation was surrounding the issue of paying for a hosting account. My friend already has a website, in addition to his blog, so he already has a hosting account. He thought to move his blog away from WordPress.com, he’d have to get ANOTHER hosting account, and pay another monthly hosting fee. Not necessarily so!

For him, there will be no additional expense to self-host his blog, because he’s already paying for hosting for his website, and he can host his blog in that same account. For someone who has a blog on WordPress.com, but does not already own a hosting account, there will be the additional expense of a hosting account to move the blog away from WordPress.com.

Another question he had was about the order in which you do things to have a smooth conversion. Here is the order I recommend:

If you do not already have a hosting account:

1. Get a hosting account (I can recommend Stribling Consulting or Everlast Hosting, as I use both.) You’ll need at least 1 SQL database, so keep that in mind when you’re selecting a package.
2. Purchase a domain name, and set the nameserver information to point at your hosting account (if you don’t, you will have difficulty installing and setting up WordPress - it uses domain names, so that has to be working.)

If you already have a hosting account and a separate domain name for your blog:

1. Add the domain name to your hosting account (if your hosting account will allow hosting of multiple domains.)
2. Set the nameserver and IP address information for your separate domain name to ‘point to’ your hosting account. (If your hosting account won’t allow hosting of multiple domains, you can usually upgrade your hosting package to one that will.)

If you already have a hosting account and do not want a separate domain name for your blog:

1. Create a subdirectory (usually called ‘blog’) on the root directory of your hosting account.
2. When installing WordPress, be sure to identify that subdirectory as where you want WP installed.

Then, proceed as follows:

1. Install WordPress
2. Install your theme of choice
3. Install and activate any plug-ins you want to use
4. Log in to your WordPress.com blog and use the Export function to create a WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR, will contain your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags and save it to your computer.
5. Once you’ve saved the WXR download file, login to your self-hosted WordPress blog and use the Import function import your blog. Now all your content from your old blog resides on your new blog! Cool, huh?
6. Begin blogging!

Finally, don’t be afraid! The nice thing about all this is you can ‘mess up’ without the earth shifting on its axis. And with all things computer - back up what you’ve got before you start!

If this looks like too much for you - contact me for a free consultation. I’ll be glad to answer your questions and help you determine the most expedient, cost-effective way to self-host your WordPress blog. There are many, many options at almost every step of the process, so don’t be afraid to ask for help sorting it all out.

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