Tiffinbox

Inspiring Photographers

Want A Self-Hosted WordPress Website?

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A rather frazzled wedding photographer asked out aloud why her wordpress.com based blog/site was suddenly seeing advertisements that she hadn't approved. I quickly contacted her and let her know that because her site was (nameofherbusiness.wordpress.com) she was having WordPress dictate what goes on her site. What she has is a “managed” blog site. One easy solution would be to move to a self-hosted site.

Thankfully, there are ways to move your content over to a site that you have more control over. Also, if you are just starting out as a photographer and want to do it right, read on.

Full disclosure – not long ago, this site was hosted and managed by Typepad. In a future post, I'll go into more detail about why I moved from that managed option to a self-hosted solution.

I first came across this blog post: How To – Move From WordPress.com To WordPress.org. If that's a bit too geeky, check out the graphic below:

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your Self-Hosted WordPress Website
Like this infographic? Get more WordPress and hosting tips from Synthesis.

And, if that doesn't do it for you, you may want to sign up for this FREE 9-part course called Site Set-Up Kit. Produced by Wendy Cholbi and Pamela Wilson, it's targeted towards beginners and they promise that it will be jargon-free. Even though I publish this and other blogs using the WordPress platform, I signed up to learn something new.

Tiffinbox, for example, is a self-hosted site. That means, I pay to host it on a server owned by BlueHost.com [affiliate] and I get to decide on what gets published, including advertisements. When, not if, you start considering where to host your blog or your website, I recommend BlueHost as an option. They routinely rank high among website hosting companies and I have always found their customer service to be very prompt.

So, if you have a website or blog hosted and managed by say, Blogger, Typepad or LiveJournal, where you really do not have a way of controlling all of the content you see on your site, you should be going the self-hosted WordPress route.

Yes, there is a little bit of work involved in setting it up. So, if you have any questions about that feel free to ask in the comments section below. I am happy to help as best as I can, or, I will direct you to a resource who will address your concerns.

I just stumbled upon another blog post about setting up a self-hosted WordPress website by Michael Hyatt. Check it out too!

Seshu | Editor & Publisher

Seshu | Editor & Publisher

Seshu is an Avon, Connecticut based headshot photographer and family portrait photographer. He edits and publishes Tiffinbox and produces Tiffincast for photographers like you!