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Top 5 Lessons in Upgrading Your Blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org

Finally, I have successfully moved my blog from WordPress.com to a self-hosted, WordPress.org powered one!  I've come a long way from my first blog in Blogger, transferring it to WordPress.com and then finally making the move to something that's more customizable, more personal, more me.

Upgrading a blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org really shows a lot of commitment on a blogger's part, and doing this has taught me first-hand some valuable lessons.  If you're thinking of doing the same thing, allow me to share the top 5 lessons I learned in my experience:

1. Decide on your Direction

By now you should know already where you want to take your blog.  I think this is the most crucial thing to consider before making that commitment of moving your blog from a free service to a paid hosted one.  Will you be blogging about your life, a specific niche maybe like travel, food, tech, etc?  Whatever it is, know what you want to blog about.  This of course means knowing yourself.  If I may re-write that famous quote, "the unexamined life is not worth blogging about."  Know what to say about yourself, what you want your readers to know and be ready to introduce yourself through your blog.

2. Build your Brand

Once you know your direction, it's time to build your brand, and this is closely tied to your domain name.  If you just plan to buy your domain now, you won't have much of a problem if the first lesson has been taken care of.  Remember, domain names can be tricky (it can harm or build your brand) so take note of some pointers before buying one:

• Is the name too long?
• Is the name easy to pronounce?
• Are there other similar-sounding domain names?
• Is the name unique or distinctive enough?
• Is the name memorable and does it make an impression?
• Is the name consistent with the image you want to project?

Another thing connected to your brand aside from your domain name is your blog's design.  What everyone likes so much about WordPress is the availability of so many downloadable themes that you can use and the ease of installing them.  Once you've bought your domain and signed up for a hosting service already, you can download a number of themes that you see fit for your blog and install them.  One tip to easily install themes, use cPanel to access your blog's host and use Fantastico de Luxe for one-click installation of themes.

3. Take your Time

For someone with limited knowledge of HTML, CSS, and other technical considerations, it really pays to allot quality time in moving your blog to a self-hosted one.  And if you're like me and you have a day job, all the more is this something to be considered.  Check your schedule and plan your week ahead so you'll know how many hours per day you can spend in working on your blog transfer.  Make sure you inform the important people around you of what you plan to do and when so you won't mess up other people's schedule in the process.  I learned from my experience that because I was learning along the way, it took more time than I expected it.

4. Better by Beta

The best thing about working on something on the web is that you can afford to make mistakes while in the process of launching something, hoowever, nobody has to know it.  How do you do that?  Create a subdomain first (e.g., http://beta.yourdomain.com), install WordPress here, install your themes and then do what you have to do.  Adjust the layout, change the colors, edit the CSS, install all the needed plug-ins, do all your mistakes here, all the trial-and-errors and once you're satisfied with the finished product, then do it in your actual blog.

5. Post and Promote

After you've "launched" your newly redesigned blog with all the trimmings in it (MyBlogLog, Feedburner, Twittercounter, Plurkfeed, etc.), prepare to announce with your first post (which obviously I'm doing right now).  Spread the word to all your connections in all the possible channels.  Of course, be open to comments and suggestions and violent reactions (I hope not).  There will always be room for improvement so always take criticisms constructively and praises humbly.

So if your're still wondering whether to move forward to transferring your blog from a free service to a hosted one (in my case, from WordPress.com to .org), I encourage you to think really hard about it and plan harder for it if you do decide to make the jump.  I hope these lessons will help you and if you have some tips and lessons to share, please do so and leave a comment on things I may have missed.