Right, I've gone with hostgator, exported and then imported my blog Anyone know of a guide to making your own theme or customising an existing one?
Obviously there are a ton of hosting ops. As a newb 18 months ago i started using bluehost.com. AWESOME. reliable as many sites as you need and most importantly 24/7 help desk. i would give you my affiliate link but cant locate it.
I dont know why anyone chooses free hosting with all the server restrictions and "unknowns" when shared hosting costs about 4 bucks a month. Free hosts owe you no obligations, which mean that they can boot you off whenever they want.
well people summed down the benefits of self hosting, I would recommend getting hostgator you can get your first month of hosting for only 0.1$ using the coupon 404PAGE and if you need any help on your blog check my sig.
This is a great place to start: http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page Particularly: http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
You can make a 301 redirect (permanent) to your new blog location. 301's DO pass PR, so from a ranking perspective your new location *will* start with 0 PR but gain it back fairly quickly. In that case you may want to get help backing up your current blog files and database. I bet wordpress.com has help files on this too. ' I know for a fact that hostgator.com will help transfer sites. Perhaps ask them if they have transfered wordpress.com sites and how to get your database etc. In the long run, your privately hosted top domain (not a wordpress.com subdomain) will help your link building efforts and help increase your PR. And both of those mean more traffic. By the way, whether one is serious or not on making money on their blogs, the reason why people give up is lack of patience. A new blog will not make you decent money for several months, perhaps a year. Once your site is properly set up, properly monetized and has sufficient back links and at least some page rank, you will make money easily. But you need to stick with it. Don't give up too soon.
Thanks, I won't give up until September 2009! I have exported my wordpress and imported it to here: eczematreatmentblog.com It has all the content as far as I can tell. I will look into how to do a 301 redirect.