Migrating to WordPress; what you need to know! || Blogtober

Let’s start from the beginning in how I actually got the ball rolling into the migration. Well, I’m not very tech savvy so I didn’t want to do the migration myself because I just knew something would go wrong or I’d get stuck half way through. As I’ve had a good experience with pipdig before having used their templates and they’ve alway been very helpful, I decided to do the migration through pipdig. Phil from pipdig was very good at keeping me updated in what was happening and what I needed to do etc. I was told to add pipdig as an admin for my blog so they could have access to my account and start the process.

Pipdig charge £175 for doing the migration for you and you do also get to choose a template of your choice included in this price. I was told to find a host, to which I was recommended BlueHost by Phil at Pipdig. I ended up paying for the basic plan for a period of 3 years, which costed £128 and it worked out at a few pounds a month but it was done on a lump sum.

Due to doing Blogtober at the time, I was very happy that my blog stayed live throughout and that I could keep blogging during it, until the last evening when I was asked to keep off of my site until everything had gone through. The overall process took around 1 week but I think it took a little bit longer because google kept locking pipdig out of my account for ‘suspicious activity’. I guess I just didn’t know how secure my site was haha.

I have had a Google Domain for nearly a year now and I was happy when I was told that I could keep it and they could easily carry it over to my new site. With BlueHost you do get a free Domain though!

After the whole migration process had gone through I was sent my website link, my login details that he had used (this was the same as my Blogger one so he used the same which was nice) along with information about how to set up Adsense, google analytics and much more with links to guides with clear steps on how to do them.

This is something that I didn’t even think about before I started this process but all the posts I have previously uploaded all say that they have 0 views! I have kept some of my google analytics views but as I didn’t connect this to my blog properly until a few months ago, most of them are gone. Obviously this isn’t the be all and end all, but it is nice to see how well a post is doing and how much your readers are enjoying particular posts and subjects.

I don’t know if this is to do with the fact that my new website is self hosted (or hosted I’m not actually sure in the difference) but I have been earning more money from my blog than I have before. It’s still next to nothing but it’s getting better so I’m looking forward to being able to put that money back into my blog to improve it when the time comes.

I have to make my blog exactly how I wanted it to be. WordPress is all about the plugins that are very easy to download and personalise before choosing where abouts you want to place it on your site. Whether it be your page hits counter, google analytics tracker or even snow falling for a Christmassy theme … you name it, it’s on there. I’m sure there’s still things that I don’t even know you can do yet.

Thank you much for taking the time to read this post and I really hope that it helped you out or as just a heads up if you were ever thinking about migrating from your current site to a WordPress one.