It’s funny that tonight I came across this posting at Trish’s Reading Nook in regards to what’s the deal with self-hosting because I’ve been debating that question lately. The main reasons I’ve been considering it is because I’m getting a little (ok a lot) irritated that I can’t tweak the themes I’m using on my blog. I like the two column look (although been debating moving to a three column theme) but I want my main content area to be a little wider with less white space on the left and right side. From what I can tell if you use the free WordPress blogs you have to pay for the CSS Editing upgrade and pay a minor fee every month after that in order to do this. If I’m going to pay might as well self-host?
The other thing that is ticking me off is I couldn’t add my LibraryThing or any other widget because the free WordPress won’t let you use javascript widgets due to security issues. Then I tired using the enhanced image for my Amazon store but WordPress won’t let you use iFrames either. Such a pain!
What has kept me from taking the plunge?
1. Figuring out who to go with? I’m not the most computer saavy person so I would need something that is easy to set up and get my blog running.
2. I exported my blog awhile ago and tried testing importing it onto a server at work and got an error message that the file was too big to import. I really don’t want to lose my old content. I can’t figure out if this is a server set up issue or a self-hosting WordPress issue. I found something on the forums about modifying php files but again I’m not really computer/server saavy so figuring this out might prove difficult.
3. When I look at my referrer information I get quite a few hits from en.wordpress.com/tag/xxx which I think only works on the free WordPress site? So not sure how many hits I would lose going to self-hosted.
So what to do, what to do? Honestly issues 1 & 2 are probably the biggest sticking points. I could probably get help from co-workers on #1 but it would suck if I got my own site and then couldn’t import my past blog postings. What do you guys think? Should I take the plunge? Have any of you moved from the free WordPress to a self-hosted WordPress site?
3 comments
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May 16, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Yvette Kelly
I bought a domain and never worked out how to move my blog across.Now I just use the e mail.Also I found out that you can lose your info if you move over so that stalled me.And then you lose quite a bit of your ranking at the beginning.And to top it off I have quite a few blogger.com traffic that I dont want to lose.So I am quite happy to stay right where I am.Besides blogger allows a lot of the stuff that you mentioned you can’t do.But don’t listen to me I am really just a newbie and ignorant.Until I find out more I am staying right where I am.
May 17, 2009 at 5:11 am
Jenn
You’re so much more computer savy than I am, but I am pretty sure that the previous commenter is correct that Blogger allows javascript widgets and some other fancy editing. I also imported all my old posts from 2004, about 150 posts, and everything seems okay.
May 17, 2009 at 7:40 am
dsuzuki
Hmmm…so I guess another question which do most people prefer? Blogger or WordPress? Does Blogger let you edit your themes?