If you’re someone whose big plans consistently outrank your technical skills, you’ll understand this post. Migrating An Unedited Life from WordPress.com to a self-hosted site this past week was akin to surviving a plunge off a tall blog into a hip-deep pile of fang- and claw-bearing critics. Not surviving it even — enjoying it.
I just really, really wanted those plugins.
I’ve suffered from unlimited plugin envy for awhile now, having started this adventure over on Blogger and then migrating it to free WordPress hosting. That journey was probably a bigger hassle because it involved the unthinkable act of re-routing DNS settings, (shudder) and I think it took me a solid week to make the whole transition successfully. Eventually, my blog and I reappeared in shimmering parts on the new platform.
They really shouldn’t allow such inexperienced crew members at the transporter controls. Someone could implode.
But this week was worse.
This latest transition happened over a period of three days, even with the super-easy import and export tools on WordPress. The biggest problems came about because of the disjointed way I went about buying a domain from one provider and hosting from another. Life can never be too easy or make too much sense when you’re shopping the $.99 cent racks.
And the smart thing to do would have been to pick up the phone and call support, but that would have entailed having a real conversation with a real living creature that wasn’t a beagle, so of course that was out of the question.
I finally figured it all out, I think … from transferring the domain name to re-configuring the permalinks. Everything seems to work at this point, unless you’re trying to access an old link from a mobile device and then may God help you because I have no idea.
But if you’re currently taking advantage of free hosting over at WordPress, and you’ve toyed around with the idea of having more control over your own site, I can’t recommend migrating strongly enough. I love the new toys I have to play with over here. The endless themes alone could easily derail a person for an entire day. And you might have noticed this if you stopped by yesterday as An Unedited Life went through an extended identity crisis.
I’m just hoping they’re all free, because if not, I’m in serious trouble.
I am probably the last person on the planet to learn WordPress, so I’m sure recounting the whole horrifying experience won’t be much help to anyone reading this. From my position over here in the cave, I’m feeling pretty tickled with my stone-rolling abilities, but for those of you who have been using forks for years, I’ll curb my compelling need to overshare.
I do have to say though, that for someone whose technical abilities probably rival your great-grandmother’s, I’m sort of pleased with myself.
And anyway, I’m pretty sure there’s a plugin for that.
Image Credit: Jumping Man by Filip Pticek
The post The Happy Consequences of Unlimited Plugin Envy appeared first on An Unedited Life.