I decided I was going to shamelessly imitate my buddy Scoble and move my blog to WordPress.org from WordPress.com. This involved calling in favors from EVERY friend I have ever had, especially Chuck Reynolds, Darin Wayrynin and Brent Spore. I’m so grateful to all of them for their help that I tested every link here to see if it worked. I usually let it fall to the gods to ensure that typos aren’t in the links.
Here’s how we did it:
1)Because I already had a blog on WordPress.com and wanted to move it over to the more powerful platform, I asked my ISP, Deru, to set me up with access to my server. Now Deru, Darin’s company, has been our ISP since we started. I learned about uptime and downtime in 1998-99 when Ed and I were on the board of Opnix, a defunct startup with the great idea of optimizing packet delivery (ahead of its time). Darin was also on the board, and he was starting Deru. Because he was both knowledgeable and sweet (he will hate that word), we became friends, and I even crashed his bachelor party, which involved secretly flying to Las Vegas and appearing where I wasn’t wanted:-) I didn’t stay long!
So Darin set me up with a Sandbox. Then I talked to Chuck Reynolds of Rynoweb, who is a web architect and a buddy from Gangplank, Phoenix’s premier coworking facility.
Chuck installed WordPress 2.8 for me, and then I started installing plugins and widgets following Robert Scoble’s picks. I got them all installed, and half of them didn’t work. That’s where Chuck came in. He took a look and realized that Thesis, the theme I had chosen (learned this from @karoli) hadn’t yet updated to be compatible with WordPress 2.8, so he went back and reinstalled the last version.
Now I’ve got almost everything working: Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, search, etc. But NOT Friendfeed. And I can’t remove the widget either. So I’m waiting for poor Chuck to wake up (it’s Sunday) so I can badger him again).
We haven’t even gotten to the branding and design of Stealthmode yet, which is where Brent comes in.
I will say that WordPress.com is much easier to set up and use if you are a “normal” person (a writer with a Ph.D. in English, not from DeVry). But I found that it lacks the social components to necessary to today’s web.
I will be appearing at Wordcamp next Saturday to chide my friend Matt about these serious shortcomings in his free product :-)
I feel that sense of entitlement welfare moms must feel: if you are going to help me, at least make it perfect for me. LOL
BTW, you can visit the work in progress here. Criticism welcome. Notice that Google Friend Connect and FB Connect are still not working. I’m now officially confused. They were working an hour ago:-)
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Ah, we have to do the same thing with my blog and Alex’s, think it will be best to learn with mine and then do his.
Have to wait for the IT manager to have a moment to come up for air first though.
Hi Francine, For me wordpress.com’s killers are the inability to modify templates, scarcity of plugins and the paucity of themes that are usable for the average small business.
Keep me posted with how the change goes ok? I am ready to make the change but am a bit of a scaredy cat right now. Does that mean you cant send people directly from your .com to your .org version?
I would try to stick with themes that are kosher with WordPress’ license (the GPL), which Thesis isn’t. There are plenty of free and premium themes that support the GPL, if you’re not sure just ask the author.