Two years ago, I decided to pull the trigger and transition my web site, Open Water Chicago (www.openwaterchicago.com), from a free WordPress.com blog to a completely self-hosted WordPress.org platform. And it wasn’t that easy for me because I didn’t (and still don’t) have an advanced technical background. So I’d like to share with you the lessons I learned and provide you with a simple but effective roadmap so that you too can make the leap as painlessly as possible.
Some of the key areas to be discussed include the following:
- Why blog at all?
- Why use WordPress? And why WordPress.org over WordPress.com?
- Essential set-up costs: what you need, and how to get it all inexpensively
- Setting up hosting
- Securing, transferring, and assigning domain name(s)
- Installing WordPress.org
- Creating a MySQL database for your domain and website
- Migrating content to WordPress.org
- Tweaking your content
- The Adventure Begins: themes, plugins, and endless experimentation
