I’m a wordpress.com blogger. WordPress.com is awesome for a new bloggers. It’s easy to use, looks good, gives you lot’s of detail about what’s going on with your blog and has an enormous, engaged user community which means no matter what you’re trying to do, a simple Google search will give you an answer. WordPress.com has been good to me but I think I’m up for a change.
Over the coming weeks I’m going to be blogging about… blogging. Specifically about my journey moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org (or self hosted WordPress). I’m going to have some help along the way from the lovely people over at Little Hero Hosting who will be helping me out with the move. This posting series is in someways sponsored because they’re providing me a lot of the transfer support in return for me documenting the journey.
Why I’m ready to move to from a wordpress.com site to a self hosted wordpress.org site
One of my goals was to make some income from writing. Nothing too flash, just enough to keep petrol in the Aston Martin. My plan was to write good posts regularly that would build a group of engaged readers and then write a small amount of paid content that I could use to generate some cash. Since I made that decision I’ve managed to get into a rhythm with my posts , building a small group of people that regularly check out my writing.
What I need now is the flexibility to tweak my site’s appearance, host some advertising (which wordpress.com doesn’t like you doing) and (try) to optimise my sites SEO and Google search rankings. I also like the idea of truly owning my blog.
What about people on blogspot.com – should they be looking at WordPress.org?
There seems to be a lot of people offering to help others switch their blogspot.com site to a self hosted wordpress.org site. I’ve not used a blogspot.com site so I can’t comment on what you can and can’t do with it but some quick Google research highlights some of the common reasons that people are switching;
- Google owns your blog. There are rumours about Google black listing people for no particular reason which means you can’t access your blog. Has this happened to you?
- Blogger sites are not always taken seriously – Again I have no idea if this is true. Blogger seems to have the ability to support a proper URL and I take plenty of blogspot.com sites seriously. Have you experienced anything like this?
- WordPress.org allows more attractive, functional websites. This is probably down to personal preference and if your blogspot sites suits what you are after visuall – great. I can only speak from my experience that WordPress does do some very nice looking websites
- Stats require Google analytics and scripting. I have no idea if this is true. Funnily enough one of the reasons I want to move to WordPress.org is to get access to google analytics for my site
- Blogger has limited SEO flexibility.
It’s nice to have some help along the way
As I mentioned earlier. I’m lucky enough to have the Australian based Little Hero Hosting & Little Hero Designs helping me along as I grow up my site. They specialise in helping people move from Blogspot.com or wordpress.com to a self hosted WordPress.org website. Before talking to Little Hero I was intending to do the work myself but after a couple of hours of confusion I thought enlisting the help of someone that knew what they were doing made more sense. Over the coming weeks I’ll explain how businesses like Little Hero Hosting can make changing blogs easier and safer.
So are you considering moving? Is there anything you would like to know? Have you moved already? If so, how was it?
Like what your reading? Can’t risk missing another post? Want to see how this crazy adventure turns out? Then why not keep up on all thing Illiterate via the facebook page, twitter or bloglovin?
Sharing my Tuesday with Jess over at EssentiallyJess.com for I Blog on Tuesday
the illiterate infant 
I recently moved over to WordPress using Little Hero Hosts when they had their awesome deals around Easter time. They were an absolute godsend for someone like me who mostly has no idea what they are doing. It was all done in a matter of hours and any questions I had were answered pretty quickly.
Hi Tegan – welcome to the illiterate infant. LHH have been great so far and seem to know what they are talking about. The more you research the more you realise just how badly it can go
I will be following your journey with avid interest. Little Hero is a name that has already been suggested to me so this is further support in their favour. I can see this becoming a seriously useful and inspired post series and I’m looking foreard to coming along for the (virtual) ride.
inspiration is my middle name… as well as “stop showing off you nonce”
I’ll be following as well. Wishing you a smooth run. Thinking about doing the same thing at some point.
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Good luck with the move. I have always been on WordPress.org and grateful for that, but have seen many people move over with no problems. – deb
Hi deb and welcome to the illiterate infant. You’re right about problems, there is so much out there on the Internet about how to get out of the mess you can find yourself in.
Good timing as I too am about to do the same – will watch with interest.
It’s going to be intersting
Good luck with the move, Kev. Have always been on WordPress, starting with wordpress.com. When you transfer over to .org you’l be asking why you didn’t do it earlier!
I am currently on Word Press and have no complaints – except paying for premium themes irritates me. As you can see my theme is not premium. I’ve also been thinking alot about the direction my blog is travelling. (because currently it feels like a race to the bottom).
Congrats on the move! I went from Blogger to WordPress.org and was amazed at the amount of extra things you can do with your blog!! I love it… and will never go back! Little Hero Hosting did my move too and design!
i have been thinking about the move from blogspot to wordpress but not to sure about it still. I’m not going to be making any money out of it to pay for it. But I’m still interested only because they look different. All blogspot blogs have the same layout and its repetitive. I like to have something different to others,
I made the move from blogger to wordpress to do the same as you – keep a little petrol in the Aston Martin – not sure how i’ll go yet but i’m very excited. I actually deleted all my posts from blogger last night. Hooray! Moving wasn’t a difficult process because i got a really cool developer SplendourWeb to develop it, and a gorgeous designer Flying Miffy to make it pretty. I find wordpress awesome but it’s still early days so i’m exploring like crazy. Good luck!!
Hi Kim – welcome to the illiterate Infant. Great to see you’ve had some success and found some good operators in the process.
Hey Kev,
My blog is currently hosted on the free WordPress site and am looking to make the leap across to WordPress.org. Just to be clear, once you have your domain name, it’s just a matter of downloading WordPress from WordPress.org and using that to make alterations similar to what happens with the original WordPress site, yeah? Or is it more complicated than that?
Hello mate,
There’s the transfer of your old stuff to the new site which can be a bit complex (posts, comments) etc and then the setup of the new sites stats, look and feel and URL’s. I’m not sure how complex it is yet – I’ll be working through this over the next few weeks
Just a month ago I went with LHH and moved from blogger to self hosted. Love the flexibility and the way the site works. I just need to work out the best way to get some of my old readers overs that haven’t changed with me. Goodluck with the move!
I cannot say enough positives about having your own self hosted blog, but also Little Hero Hosting & Little Hero Designs …
I will not trust anyone else with my sites.
You are in great hands there!
Every few months I think about moving to a completely self-hosted blog and then I think about the effort, and see the issues that orders have with their hosts servers being down, meaning their own sites can’t be accesses and I have a lie down and decide to stick with what works. Blogger has been nothing but good to me and having my own domain name was easy to set-up and maintain through Blogger. Having said that though, I never completely rule anything out when it comes to blogging and if I was really serious about making a little coin from my blog then I would consider switching to 100% self-hosted but at this stage the cost holds me back.
I’m looking forwa to reading all about how it goes, this should be a fascinating series of posts. Hope it’s all smooth sailing for you.
Yay Kev!!! I love being on WordPress.org and I feel all grown up having to take responsibilty for my own site. It’s a nice feeling. You definitely won’t regret it 🙂
I moved from blogger to WordPress.org last year. I did it on my own, and somehow (ie purely by arse) I pulled it off. I much prefer wp. Good luck with the move!
I moved from WordPress.com to self hosted relatively easy enough on my own, I have transferred all old posts and comments but not properly redirected nor am happy with appearance/structure just yet. If you can pay someone to do it for you, it should be relatively stress free. I’m a want-to-do-everything-by-myself kinda gal but it may just be time to bite the bullet an pay someone to get it right!
Good luck with the move! Sounds like the sky is the limit for you!
I am on exactly the same journey at the moment Kevin. I am getting help from Castle Design. It took me a while to bite the bullet, but I am doing it, and am excited.
Hi Zanni – great to be sharing the journey with you. I’m a wee bit excited as well.
Oh i’ll be following this one closely – very interested in whether the move from blogspot to wordpress is worth it and how little hero hosting can support
I’m so looking forward to read these posts Kevin even though I just moved my blog to self-hosted. For me, it was not a smooth move but at least I got there at the end with the help of Michelle. I’m still not super excited with my move at the moment because there are heaps of things I still have to learn how to manage. I’ll get there slowly, slowly. Wishing you all the best for your move.
Looking forward to reading your experiences with the move, I used Michelle for design services for two of my self-hosted sites so she was the first person I turned to when I wanted to move a blogger site that I took over across to self hosted wordpress (my much, much preferred platform). I’m relatively techy and have no doubt I could have muddled through the process but I always figure that you put your heart and soul into your little space on the web and if you’ve got few technical skills it’s beyond crazy to try to do it yourself instead of paying the relatively low cost of getting a professional to do it.
Good luck with the move, I’m sure it will all go smoothly with Michelle helping out.
I’d never attempt such back end acrobatics unassisted! I’ve already done this, and so glad I did. Good luck with the transition, you’ll love it once you’ve broken it in 🙂 #teamIBOT
I started on WP self hosted, so don’t need to change, but love to see how everyone manages the challenges of blogging, and will be reading with interest.
As a newbie, it’s all exciting still to me. 🙂
Thats awesome! Good on you for making the move! I mainly blog for fun, and have absolutely no idea about all this technology stuff, I’m with blogspot and it’s just what I came across. I will continue to read in anticipation of maybe making a move myself (one day!)
I was thinking of moving to WP from Blogger, but it all just seems like too much work right now! Maybe one day, when I have LOADS of time to do it correctly!
I think I’m too new (and distracted atm) to move yet. But I’m interested to watch your changes and hear how it goes.
Great timing to read your blog. I’m planning to move from blogger because it is a bunch of arse-hat. It has stopped alerting my followers when I post and will only let you sign up if you have a gmail address. This company sounds interesting.
Hey Jen – welcome to the illiterate infant and congratulations for winning the best blog title competition for the month!
The next post is about LHH so stay tuned
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