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Benefits of a WordPress.org Website

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WordPress.org-Benefits

Moving to a New Website / Blog

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Part 1 of the website series explained the possibilities of setting up a website and the pros and cons of free URL’s. In Part 2 you will learn about the differences between free WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress.org websites / blogs and the benefits of having your OWN  website. WordPress started out as a blogging tool, focused on creating an easy user experience with nice design. It has since grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging platform in the world.
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Difference between WordPress.com – WordPress.org
A frequent point of confusion — what’s the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?
Just some of the many: In a WordPress.org website you can install payment systems, you can sell your print books from your own website and earn more, all plug-ins are allowed. You get rid of the annoying ads that appeared on your WordPress.com site. If you want you can sell your own ads and monetize even on affiliate programs – which is all not possible on free WordPress.com blogs / websites.

The WordPress.org interface is clean and user-friendly. WordPress also offers a rich content editor, allowing immediate changes on the live website. Users can easily extend functionality with the use of plug-ins, adding features such as a shopping cart, contact form, gallery, or social media tools. WordPress is intuitively search engine-friendly. Built-in features and functions as well as a host of plug-ins aid a quick and easy search engine indexing of WordPress websites.

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Benefits of your own website
I love how relatively easy my new WordPress.org website works. You will need to learn the platform initially – done in minutes – as there is not much difference to a WordPress.com blog. Installing a PayPal button is done in seconds. Once you have done some editing to posts and pages, you will find how much you really have at your fingertips without having to sign-up for the big web maintenance plans of the past or have to wait for days and weeks for a non-responsive developer or coder to change an event date or update an article about your latest book on your site. You will become totally independent!

You can now update your own website in addition to adding fresh news, information, and posts about your books or add your latest blog post! It’s as easy as writing a blog! Google’s Search Engines love frequent updated websites! Good for your Search Engine Ranking (SEO) too! Find more reasons this article “7 Reasons to Convert Your WordPress.com Blog to WordPress.org“.

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Got rid of the dreaded Uploading…
I was always struggling to upload new content of our website to the web hosting, mixing up File-Zilla
panes and screwing up the website. As a “non-techie” it was always kind of trial & error for me, and I had to call more than once the web hosters technical help – including all the waiting times at the call center, having to listen to their annoying music or commercials… Now with the WordPress websites, I just delete the old text, and type in the new one or add/exchange images as easy as it is on my blog.
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Benefits of your own website
With your very own website or blog, you will get all the Search Engine Rankings – CONTRARY to “free” websites, such as Weebly, WordPress.com or Wix, where you are NOT even the owner of the site. You can add your own plug-ins, opt-in email address form for future newsletters, follow-me buttons, affiliate programs etc.
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Moving to WordPress.org using Guided Transfers
How to set up your WordPress.org website is explained in several YouTube videos, created by BlueHost. You find these step-by-step introductions in seven short videos. Being somewhat computer / web-savvy these instructions will help you. And there are also WordPress.org forums where you can find answers to possible questions.

If you move your WordPress.com blog or website to a new domain name, you will find that internal links to pages and references to images are not updated. Instead, these links and references will point to your old domain name. There is a free plug-in available that helps you change old URL’s and links in your website.
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In case you don’t want to do this yourself:
If you want to move your WordPress.com blog to a self-hosted blog using the WordPress.org software, you have the option to purchase a Guided Transfer. All your content will be moved, your domain(s) switched over, and support for your new WordPress.org provided for a two-week period. If you would like to get this help, the WordPress Guided Transfer is available for a one-time fee of $129.00 per blog.

… or for much less, if you find such a great web help as I found online:

Individual help for transfer
Changing existing websites / blog to WordPress.org, I was lucky to find a young British computer specialist over the Internet. He is a WordPress whizz and set-up three websites for us, but also transferred one of our existing websites to WordPress.org and the existing blog to the new address:
for a much more favorable fee. Drop me a line if you want to get his coordinates: 111Publishing a t gmail.com
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What we got: Blog or Website Set-up / Improvements

  • download WordPress website (free)
  • Email newsletter opt-in
  • Share buttons for Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Pinterest etc.
  • Follow-Me buttons
  • Background colors, font colors, font size change
  • contact form or set-up email
  • transfer of all images and text

Optional:
- Custom Logo (if you already have one)
- Transfer to Hosting (e.g. your own URL from GoDaddy.com to BlueHost.com)

Conclusion: If you run a professional web site – an author blog, a publishing business, a portfolio - then you are much more likely to need total control over your hosting, advertising, branding, sales and more.

Resources:

http://the247entrepreneur.com/list/wordpress-for-business/
http://mashable.com/2011/02/09/move-blog-wordpress-com-org/
http://diythemes.com/thesis/rtfm/differences-wordpress-com-org/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-a-blog/#moving-to-wordpress-org
http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/self-hosted-wordpress-org-vs-free-
wordpress-com-infograph/

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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only $ 159 for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/ Once you are on this website, click on Seminar to register.

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Tagged: benefits of WordPress.org website, contact form, content editor, Difference between WordPress.com - WordPress.org, gallery, installing plug-ins, installing sharing buttons, Search Engine Rankings, self-hosted WordPress.org website, shopping cart, social media tools, upload to hoster, Wordpress.org