Heyo Bookaholics!

The Saga Continues!

Last weekend (I mean the weekend before) I began discussing the changes made to Jasper + Spice and ended up solely talking about self-hosting rather than the changes I’ve made to this site… Oops. I intentionally left the last post on a cliffhanger so I can continue the discussion in this post.

To pick up where I left off, I will be discussing the issues and also the benefits I’ve seen since starting to self-host. I will also be shouting out Tracy’s name many more times, so please go follow her blog www.trufflereads.com, because her blog is amazing!!!!!

Alrighty.

Let’s jump right back in… to an apology:

I AM SO TERRIBLY SORRY THAT I MISSED POSTING ALL OF LAST WEEK!!!

Really, I am so sorry and I felt like a*s all of last week because work and when I got home all I wanted to do was not look at a computer screen and just sleep. I’ve had enough of the sleep this weekend thankfully and I am glad to be delivering content (and maybe sticking to a schedule?)

Now that’s out of the way, I can actually jump straight into the Trials and Triumphs of Self-Hosting, starting with the big ‘P’ word. Patience.

Trials and Triumphs of Self-Hosting

Patience………….

Moving from a wordpress.com to a wordpress.org site, especially when I had a domain name, the ideal-ish theme and I was comfortable but not content, takes time. The first step in the entire process – after the tonne of research and buying a self-hosting platform – is to transfer over the domain name from wordpress.com to your self-hosting platform.

The platform I chose is VentraIP and I am on the freedom plan which gives me 15GB of storage (thank gosh). It took over 7 days for the domain name www.jasperandspice.com to be transferred over from wordpress.com.

Neither Tracy nor I knew what to expect with this process and I am still not sure if this is a normal time frame for this kind of activity. I was super impatient and constantly checking the status as well as my emails for any sign of activity.

Finally on the maybe 15th? day it was all sorted and transferred. I exhaled a good amount of breath and thought: “Thank Goodness, I can start blogging again!”

Yeah lol, no way.

The next step was all about exporting my old blog from wordpress.com. This kind of patience proved far harder because it was a problem I was unable to solve, and no forum was able to help with.

Exporting My Old Blog -_-

Oh man I really don’t want to relive this, but I also do not want any of you to go through what I had to, so listen very very carefully.

Once your domain name is transferred over, so you will no longer have a plan with WordPress, your wordpress.com version of your blog will revert back to a wordpress.com address. For example, my original blog (which is now private) has become www.jasperandspiice.wordpress.com. This just means that you are no longer hosting on WordPress.

YAY! …But what about your content?

Please listen carefully and Mumma Bree will tell you how to not f*ck up as she did.

How To Successfully Transfer Your Content From WordPress.com to WordPress.org:

1. Estimate the amount of storage space your content on WordPress.com is taking up. I say estimate because I don’t think there is an actual way to find out. Also be sure to include posts, pages, etc. in that the estimate, then add some additional space for plugins and future updates. You should have done this before you chose the plan, but just in case you underestimated double check.
2. Go to your wp-admin it’s at the very bottom of the left sidebar of WordPress.com homepage. Using WordPress.org, you will be seeing this view more often so make friends with it, like be BFFs. This site is the most fun and insightful part of running a blog in my opinion.
3. Under Tools (on the left side panel), you will click on Export. There are sooooooo many export options it’s so much fun! But that’s where the fun stops -_- You will export all. EVERYTHING! Unless you have a preference on what you want on your blog, you do you.
4. Call support for your self-hosting if you get stuck. VentraIP support and absolute legends and I had all of my problems solved with a single phone call, at maybe 10 pm at night after I threw a fit at my laptop, these dudes are legends. WordPress.com has no support at all and writing on forums is ridiculously hard, especially if you don’t know what your problem even is. Support at whatever hour is the main reason I love self-hosting.

Now I don’t want to make this an instructional post on how to transfer all of your content. If you’d like that, I can make one, but Scott Chow from The Blog Starter has a wonderfully detailed instructional post on how to export and import the content (linked above). My goal here is to make sure you know ‘what not to do‘ and how to not make the mistakes that I did to ensure that starting your self-hosting experience is better than mine was.

How To NOT Successfully Transfer Your Content From WordPress.com to WordPress.org:

1. My first mistake was not making sure I had enough storage… Yeah, it sounds super simple and I totally thought I had the right amount of storage but turns out 5GB is not enough for a 5-year-old blog.
2. Throwing a fit and getting really mad every time something goes wrong is not the correct way to handle things. Kinda just dobbing myself in here, and that’s the main reason why I found it so hard to export was that my emotions kept getting in the way of my rational thinking.
3. Downloading the same file even though there is CLEARLY a problem. Again I was blinded by rage, so can you blame me? You can? Yeah, now I think about it, maybe you can. Really, I don’t know why not all of my media was exporting/ importing over, but for the matter of a couple of header images, it shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it had.
4. Rush, rush, rush. You can laugh at me now. I rush everything. Man, I was so eager to get back into blogging (and then neglect my schedule like I always do), but I was legitimately having withdrawals, no joke. So I tried to rush everything, and that just made it worse, making me more angry and agitated. We all just need to calm the f*ck down, damn.
5. Don’t have posts lined up to post. Okay, but like what was I even thinking? I had spent so much time in a ball of frustration trying to solve these export/ import problems, and I was feeling down because I wasn’t ‘blogging’ but I wasn’t even writing! That would’ve cleared my head and helped me think clearer.

Just know that Self-Hosting will take more time than you expect especially if you are not experienced in the field, or if you are like me and just like to run off of the trial-and-error theory of doing things. But despite all of the heartache and annoyance the process may cause you, it will work out, albeit you may need to do some things manually, but you will prevail.

As natural selection weeds out the weak, so this process will weed out those without the perseverance and resilience to actually get through to the other side of owning their own blog.

You Will Prevail!

*Plays Happy Ending by Mika*

In the end, you are now reading posts off of the new look Jasper + Spice, and I have customised it, added plugins and the works to make it look fancy af for you all to enjoy.

I am happy with how it has turned out and I came away from the process with a lesson not only for myself but for you so that you don’t mess up as I did.

I hope this post was informative and will help you in some way. If you have any further questions or concerns, please drop me a comment below and I’ll answer it right away.

Leave your opinions in the comments or alternatively on my social media channels!
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With Love Bree xx