When I started podcasting in 2006 I had no idea that I would still be doing it 5 years later, nor that I would gain so much knowledge about media production, marketing, software, hardware and social media.
Now days when I work with newbie podcasters especially if they have any aspirations of one day growing their own online businesses I strongly suggest that they own their own domain and host their own website before they begin, simply because I didn’t do this FOR YEARS.
I hosted my podcast site on wordpress.com. I loved it. I saw nothing wrong with it. I didn’t get into this to make money. In fact I viewed paying for a website as wasted money, especially if I could get it for free!
Well, as my podcast took off, I realized that I had very little control over what I could do to my website to grow my audience, add more functionality and implement other forms of possible revenue generation. I was so embedded in the wordpress.com world and truly ignorant and scared of how to get out of it, that it literally FROZE me from taking action for almost three years.
When I finally took the plunge IT WAS SO EASY!
In lieu of you taking as long as I did to transfer to your own hosted wordpress site from wordpress.com, following are some of the tutorials that I used to transfer my blog. I’m also adding the newest service from WordPress.com which is going to help out so many people!
Transferring from WordPress.com To Your Hosted Site- WordPress Style!
Are you an existing WordPress.com user? Well, WordPress.com has just offered a new service for WordPress.com users (that means YOU) that helps them through the entire process of changing from their WordPress.com blog to their own hosted site! According to the blog post this is what they will help you do:
- Install the WordPress software at the recommended host of your choice.
- Transfer over your entire WordPress.com site.
- Install and configure Jetpack and a few other plugins to provide features that you have been using on WordPress.com.
- Configure and test permissions so that you’ll be able to have one-click installs and upgrades.
- Switch your domain(s) over.
- Provide full support for you on your new WordPress installation for a two week period.
Is that not amazing? This service is yours for $99. Yes, you can do this for free, but for some of us that had no idea how to even begin the process, avoiding the research, time, stress and worry $99 is worth it.
Tutorials For Transferring Your WordPress.com Blog To Your Own Site For Free
This is the tutorial that I used to transfer my blog over to a self hosted site:
- Blogwell: WordPress.com to WordPress.org Even though the blog post itself is not very long at all, there’s great stuff in the over 100 comments this post has received plus they have a downloadable PDF of the whole process! Very cool. I read and re-read that PDF until I made sure I got all the info that I needed embedded in my brain!
These two posts I used to supplement the information that I learned from Blogwell:
Although I had already moved my blog over to a self hosted site, about month ago Mashable published this post with a corresponding 8 minute video. Very very very well done. You should definitely bookmark this one.
There you have it!
You have no excuse now to do the deed! You can either delve into it on your own or you can pay to have it done for you 🙂 Once it’s done, it’s gonna feel so good!
For those of you that have done this transition, what tutorials did you use? Did you hire someone to do it for you? Leave your experience in the comments! We’d love to hear from you.
