The WordPress.Orgy Shiz: A First-timer Moving In

I have completely shut down (actually, I just put it in private) vidasioson.wordpress.com. It’s not like there was anything special about it, I’m just sayin’… So if you have it in your links section, I’d love it if you could change the link to, ahem, vidasioson.com.

I’ve always wanted my own vanity domain but I never knew what to put in it. So, 7 months back, when I decided to start going back to writing stupid random thoughts, I figured I should get myself a WordPress. Didn’t do much research on it, mind you; it’s just that my favorite people of all time are using the same. Although it was the easiest, most sure thing in the world, after a while it felt like I was writing inside a box I couldn’t move around in. So I decided to move out.

And so, now I’m here.

I absolutely had no idea how to make websites and stuff, and I couldn’t wait for good ‘ol friend Clare to help me out as she was out of the country. When I want things, I want them immediately – we are the now generation after all – so last weekend was a date with Google. And after a few, rather painless hours, it was up.

In case one of these days you feel like getting your own domain and plan on moving in to WordPress.org from WordPress.com, here’s what I did:

1. Purchased my domain name. Someone else bought it for me, actually (thank you!), from onlydomains.com. That should be less than PHP 500 per year.
2. Purchased a web-hosting package. Although you can purchase the domain name and web hosting together, I got mine from web.com.ph as recommended by Clare and Kit. The Personal Web Hosting package costs only P1,000 per year, which I paid for with my Smart Money. It does have limited disk space and and bandwidth, and I have yet to know whether 1 gig will suffice. But I do keep my photos in my free Tumblr and Photobucket accounts (and I’m not sure if it’s wise that all my photos are all over the place either) so I guess I should be fine. Bim of Geekout.ph suggested Hostgator (or did he?) but I found it a tad bit expensive considering that this is just one big experiment (and because I’m very kuripot). Your choice though!
3. Installed WordPress.org. Not to your laptop, which I initially thought, but to that place where you hosted your blog. In my case, it was very easy – web.com.ph allowed a 1-click-install in its cPanel (control panel) through Fantastico. Just click on Fantastico under Software/Services in cPanel, choose WordPress from the Blogs category, and follow the instructions. This is a lot of web geek jargon which even I am not accustomed to, but I assure you that if you just read and follow instructions, it’s relatively easy. Now if you’re not on web.com.ph and things look slightly different, a more detailed process could be found in the WordPress.org docs section.
4. Moved my WordPress.com blog to WordPress.org. Moving from one to the other is very easy since all you have to do is export all the contents of your blog from the old one and import them to the new one. These articles from Problogger and WordPress.com are most helpful.
5. And voila, I was done! Or so I thought. Yeah… There will be a lot of surprises, and you’ll notice that a lot of WordPress.com pre-installed plugins will not come pre-installed on .org. You’ll have to search for them one by one if you want the exact look and experience of your previous blog. This may mean that some of your photos/slide shows/videos won’t show (as we speak, I have not yet checked all of my previous posts so there may be a lot of them that won’t show well yet – ugh). If like me, you also link within your posts to other blog posts and you’ve shut down the old blog, then there will be broken links. I have to fix that soon too… Oh well. But no matter, it is a good (learning) experience. And hey, it gives you access to all those mighty plugins previously inaccessible to you. Ah. 🙂