Transferring from Wordpress.com to .org... Please help?

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Permalink Reply by Nick Tabick on June 15, 2010 at 8:45pm

Two weeks? That's the quickest jump from WP.com to self-hosted I've seen. Kudos are in order.

Anyway, to the question at hand. DNS is what tells a computer looking for a website where that site is located. Your domain currently points to WordPress.com's servers, but we want to change that to point to your new hosting plan.

According to WHOIS, you purchased your domain through Wild West Domains, or WP.com purchased it on your behalf through the same provider. Given history, I'm guessing it's the latter, as WWD is a reseller provider.

Here's where the problems step in. You need to transfer your domain to an alternative registrar (GoDaddy, DomainSite, etc.) that allows you control over the domain, as WordPress.com will not allow you to change your nameservers or the DNS records that point to your blog on WP.com for obvious reasons. You also have to wait 60 days after the purchase of a domain through most registrars (WP.com/WWD included, as noted here) to transfer it elsewhere (which will likely cost you a few bucks).

You have a decision to make:

• You can continue using WordPress.com with your current domain until the 60 days are up, then transfer the domain to another registrar and change the DNS records to point to your BlueHost account at that time. This means that you are paying for a month of hosting that you will not use, as well as the charges for a domain transfer.
• You can ditch the current domain name (at least for the next month or so) and purchase a new one for use at/through BlueHost, then immediately begin posting there. (Ideally, in this case, you'd also make one last post on your WP.com blog pointing any readers you've picked up to your new home.) This means that you are paying twice for domains, and, depending on whether you want to move your current domain at that time, the transfer fee to a new registrar and any parking fees BlueHost imposes for additional domains.

Once you've decided on a way through this hurdle, I will be more than happy to help you complete your transition. I'm keeping an eye on this thread.

If you have any WordPress-related (self-hosted or .com) questions in the future, feel free to direct them my way.

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Permalink Reply by Heather on June 16, 2010 at 12:08am

Thank you so much, this really helped! I think this may explain why I was unable to change the DNS to the nameservers Bluehost.com gave me. I guess I will have to wait another month... grrr. I'm kinda impatient, and have a bunch of things I want to do to my blog, but can't because I am limited by the .com (or at least that's kinda what my research has told me). Just to make sure, you said that I need to transfer my domain to an alternative registrar like GoDaddy or DomainSite... Bluehost is my alternative registrar, right?

Again, thank you!!! I will definitely love any help once the 60 days is up. This feels like I am taking an advanced foreign language class!

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Permalink Reply by Nick Tabick on June 16, 2010 at 12:28am

Both for the sake of helping to turn a profit from their hosting environment and for the sake of ensuring that the system isn't overrun by spammers or people looking for cheap hosting to make a quick buck (think "V1AGR4"), WP.com does limit some of what you can do, especially in the way of themes and plugins.

I did say that you need to transfer your domain to an alternative registrar. I'm not familiar with the offerings of BlueHost (or any host really, these days, as I manage my own servers), but at first glance it appears as though you can indeed transfer your domain to BlueHost. You might want to read through any documentation they have or talk with support about how everything needs to happen exactly, but they should be able to help you get to where you need to be. The link to the WordPress transfer documentation I linked to in my post above is probably also worth another read, if only to familiarize yourself with everything that needs to be done on WP.com.

And I'll mark my calendar for when I think the 60 days are supposed to be up. :)

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Permalink Reply by cooper on June 15, 2010 at 9:12pm

I'm confused. Did you have the domain before you became self hosted?

who is your domain name registered with? Whatever you do do not use godaddy, if blue host will register your domain do that and you won't have to change anything, I have no idea if they register domains of their own but it's it is easier then messing around with dns changes if you don't have to.

If not I'd need to know who your domain is registered with in order to help you because you usually have to go into the control panel and change the settings.

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Permalink Reply by cooper on June 15, 2010 at 9:21pm

also are you just pointing a free blog to a new domain or are you actually self hosting a wordpress.org blog at a new domain?

To transfer in that case it is pretty simple, you go into the dashboard scroll to tools on your wordpress.com blog and click export, save the file to your computer, when you get your new blog set up you do the same except you choose import and choose the file off your computer and it will upload to the blog.

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Permalink Reply by EmDottie on June 24, 2010 at 9:05pm

I know when I joined wordpress.org it was a little crazy but, I know if you have FTP surfer it makes uploading themes and plugins easier. If you need help with that I'll be happy to assist :)

EmDottie

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