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I have a hosted free wordpress blog. Now I am thinking to move that blog to self-hosting.

What I already have /know/tried:

1: I have a domain name purchased from a companyA.

2: I have hosting accounts Linux as well as ASP.NET with the same companyA.

3: From the cPanel of companyA I can go and install wordpress. I tried that for test and it was pretty fast process.

4: I read that I can simply go to my current blog and Export everything and Import it to my self-hosted website.

I have currently 30 posts. The Wordpress Stats shows from 200 to 500 views/day. I don't even know if that's a bad or good number.

My questions/concerns:

1: Should I host on my Linux hosting account or Windows Hosting Account? Is there any pro/cons one over other?

2: Should I be concerned about page rankings /SE etc. when transferring the blog. (newbie to this and I want to learn that, one of the reason I am moving to self-hosting...learn)

3: I read this article and so I understand step 1-2. What I don't understand is, with Domain Mapping service, how long do I need to pay for it? Like a year or foreever? EDIT: I think now they have a Site Redirect upgrad option. So is that what I should be doing now?

Any other suggestions welcome.

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  • 2
    +1 for the well researched and formed Question! Excellent Answers as well, hard to choose ;)
    – brasofilo
    Jul 13, 2012 at 12:46
  • @brasofilo thanks for +1. I am now able to upvote the answers :)
    – oms
    Jul 13, 2012 at 17:38

2 Answers 2

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The article you linked to covers everything you need to know. I will just clarify what you do not understand and what is outdated.

Site Redirect

The domain mapping is done through wordpress.com to do a 301 direct, which tells search engines that you have moved permanently to a new address. It is outdated now and superseded with the site redirect upgrade option. The link shows you exactly how to do this. And the option costs you $13 each year.

In my opinion, one year of 301 redirect is more than enough to inform search engines that you have moved. So $13 for one year is enough.

Image Implications

Also, I'm not sure how true it is that the export option will load your images. The image source link will still remain as the wordpress.com one if I'm not mistaken. It will pull the images from the old wordpress.com site. You may have to manually save the images into your host, if you want your new site to get the images from your host. Again, I'm not sure of this. I moved from wordpress.com to self-hosted back in 2007. My recent use of the export function(self-hosted to self-hosted) also yielded the same results.

Use Linux

And personally, I prefer to run Wordpress on Linux. Here's why.

More SEO Concerns

If you are afraid that the 301 redirect is not enough, you can use the SEO plugin by Yoast to improve your new site's basic SEO.

Always Backup

And here's an important piece of advice once you come into the word of self-hosting. Always backup your site when you make major changes. And do a regular backup as well. I once deleted my entire site database by accident. And I had no backups...

I hope this answers your question(s).

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  • Thanks for detailed info. I only have 3-4 images so far. So I should be ok. I will get the Redirect upgrade. I will check the SEO plugin.
    – oms
    Jul 13, 2012 at 3:51
  • I forgot to mention that you should upgrade to the most latest Wordpress versions whenever they are made available to close vulnerabilities. It is a one-click process. And as @Aahan Krish mentioned, update your plugins but do test them out thereafter. The Vaultpress plugin he mentioned is great and I too use it. To add here are some useful resources if in the future you wish to extend the capabilities of a self-hosted Wordpress. wpmu.org wpbeginner.com wp.tutsplus.com
    – Logen
    Jul 13, 2012 at 14:54
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Should I host on my Linux hosting account or Windows Hosting Account? Is there any pro/cons one over other?

It's a matter of preference and know-how. Choose one you find easier working on. If you are new to both, I'd suggest going with Linux — as most tutorials and docs on the web assume that you are on a Linux box. You can't go wrong with either, and there's always a learning curve.

Should I be concerned about page rankings /SE etc. when transferring the blog.

What I don't understand is, with Domain Mapping service, how long do I need to pay for it? Like a year or forever?

All of your blog traffic will be seamlessly redirected to your new site if you are already using a custom domain for your WordPress.com blog. If not, the old .wordpress.com URL can be redirected with the Site Redirect upgrade.

Further Reading:

Site Redirect costs $13 per year, but your .wordpress.com blog's PR will have been transferred to the new domain within 90 days.

Any other suggestions welcome.

Keep WordPress and the plugins you use up-to-date at any cost. No worried if you are on managed hosting, if not you'll have to keep the OS, Apache, PHP, MySQL and a whole lot of other stuff up-to-date (which you might already know).

Yes always backup. Nothing beats VaultPress as a backup solution for WordPress blogs, IMO (VaultPress is run by Automattic, the company behind WordPress and WordPress.com). You have very little to worry about once you purchase the service and install the plugin.

Lastly, learn to deal with problems and code-related stuff by searching— WPSE first, and then maybe Google.

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  • Thanks for your inputs. It is shared hosting, so I don't need to worry about any of the updates other than WP and plugins correct? I will look into VaultPress and other resources.
    – oms
    Jul 13, 2012 at 3:54
  • @oms Yes, that's right.
    – its_me
    Jul 13, 2012 at 3:55
  • 1
    IMHO, and it's just that: opinion...: Linux will avoid random headaches :)
    – brasofilo
    Jul 13, 2012 at 12:41

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