My new blog is here: http://www.noitartst.com/ My old blog is: http://noitartst.wordpress.com/ Idon't have a clue as to how to make it functional, get traffic, SEO it, use it to make money, though. I was running a thread here: https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/trying-to-learn-how-to-generate-blog-traffic.2697485/page-4#post-18854541 Well, I was told to get a slf-hosted Wordpress blog account, I've done that, and now I'm seeking to figure out where to go from here.
you can migrate all your contents to your self hosted wordpress w/c you will have more controls such instaling helpful plugins. after migrating you can do a 301 redirect you oldblog to your new blog. install some important plugins such seo plugin, anti spam plugin,caching etc..track your new blog by installing analytics to determine your visitors. If your blog is getting traffic try to monetize it by some related niche affiliates, ppc program etc...
Their is a small amount of technical work. Migrate the content, 301 redirect will get you started. If you are confused you should just pay a few bucks and hire someone to do it. It will save you a lot of time and headache.
Good on you for taking the step. Self-hosting can be a bit daunting for first-timers, but it looks like you're well on your way. Here are our suggestions for next steps. These focus around getting your WordPress install to a state where it'll be easy to manage, give yourself every chance of being indexed in the search engines and will help you with your SEO efforts. I'll try and keep the ideas here on free basis; Set-up 301 redirects for your old pages/site You won't want to lose any of the hard work you've put in thus far and 301 redirects allow you to direct traffic from the old pages and site to your new site. They're not hard to set-up, but not 'easy' either. For websites hosted on WordPress.com you can follow the guide at: http://en.support.wordpress.com/site-redirect/. Get yourself a nice looking theme for your website The basic WordPress themes are Ok, but they aren't 'great'. The style of theme really comes down to three factors in our opinion; 1) what you want, 2) what visitors to your site like, and 3) what fits within the theme/niche of your site. There are plenty of free themes for WordPress. I simply Googled 'free wordpress themes' and the first few sites gave a bunch of free WordPress themes to choose from: http://wordpress.org/themes/ http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/free-responsive-wordpress-themes/ http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/ Simply choose one that works for you. Most won't require any fiddling to get it where you want to. Set-up your WordPress options There isn't a great deal to configure out of the box with WordPress. There are a few essentials that might help you on your way; Permalinks: Permalinks are WordPress' answer to URL structures and as you more about SEO, you'll find that URL structures become very important. There are varying opinions on what should and shouldn't be used, however we like the simple 'Post name' setting. See: https://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/#permalink-structure. Comments: If you're going to allow discussion through the comments system to take place, you need to understand that comment spam is rife on the internet. If you want your blog to be 'read-only' then you'll need to disable comments. There are two places to do this; Settings -> Discussion: Un-tick 'Allow Users to Add Comments' and save. Each Post/Page: Each post and page can override the global setting. Simply browse to the All Posts/Pages listing, select all of the posts/pages you want comments turned off for, select 'Edit' drop down menu just above the list and click apply. You'll see a Bulk Edit screen appear. Simply find the 'Comments' option and select 'Do not allow' or 'No comments' from the drop down and click on the Update button. Time zone: Go into Settings -> General and select the appropriate time zone. The appropriate time zone is largely up to you; It might be the time zone you're located in, or if you have a specific audience, the time zone where they are located. Set-up your WordPress plugins There are some pretty nifty, helpful and essential plugins for people in your position. Here's our basic lit of must haves and of course others will either agree or disagree. It's a matter of personal taste and opinion. WordPress SEO by Yoast (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/): This is a great plugin that for the best part guides you through setting up each page and the important SEO properties. We like the SEO analysis feature, which displays when you're writing or editing a post. You can preview what the page, when indexed by Google would look like, specify a keyword and see how the content performs against it and generally takes some of the guess work out. You'll also be able to use WordPress SEO to specify your Google Webmaster and Big Webmaster ID's - two very important tools you'll need in your quest. This plugin will also create a sitemap that you can submit to Google and Big Webmaster tools to help with getting your site indexed. Google Analytics for WordPress (http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/): Another plugin from the Yoast crew you'll want absolutely need to use. This will allow you to sync up your website with Google Analytics and track all of the important statistics about your site. There are some configuration options to this plugin, however the default options should serve you well. You just need to specify your Google Analytics UA code and within a few hours your site should be tracking in GA. Share Buttons by AddThis (http://wordpress.org/plugins/addthis/screenshots/): You'll want to increase your chances of your content being shared socially to drive organic traffic and a social sharing plugin is a great way to allow visitors to easily and quickly share your content is they desire to. There are a ton of plugins that do this and the deciding factors in social sharing plugins are generally a) what the share buttons look like (and do they fit in with your site's design) and b) the number of social networks it covers. Share Buttons has a widget with statistics which is kind of neat. BackUpWordPress (https://wordpress.org/plugins/backupwordpress/) or BackWPup Free (https://wordpress.org/plugins/backwpup/): Let's face it - you don't want to put in all that hard work only to accidentally delete a file, post or worse lose the whole site. The major difference between the two plugins is that BackUpWordPress emails the files to your, while BackWPup Free can upload your back-ups to Dropbox, Amazon S3 or via FTP to another hosting account. It's always a good idea to test back-up files occasionally to ensure they can be restored. WP Smush.it (http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/): WP Smush.it is a great little tool for compressing and reducing file sizes. There is said to be a lot of emphasis from Google these days with regards to page load times and images can be big offenders of increasing page load times. Once this plugin is installed, each time you add an image to the media library it sends it to the Smush.it service which optimises the images for you. Akismet (http://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/): This neat little plugin comes installed by default on new WP installations and is ultimately a spam filter for comments posted to your website. If you've opted to have comments turned on, then we highly recommend this plugin to keep comment spam to a manageable level. You'll need to sign-up to the Akisment service, but when your blog starts to take off you'll be thankful you did! This is by no means a 'complete' list, however we think these are essential plugins. Depending on what you're trying to achieve you might consider a newsletter subscription plugin so you can email those that opt-in every time you publish a new post. If you're also building a social media presence, there are plugins that will automatically post on your behalf when a new post goes live. These really take the effort away from the process. Ok, so your WordPress site is set-up, looks pretty and is armed with the weaponry you need to be successful in blogging. Where to next? Next focuses on making sure you know what's happening with your website/blog. They say too much information can bog you down, but we'd rather too much information about what our sites are doing that not enough. If you don't already have these tools set-up, you'll want to get your accounts sorted. The tools you'll need; Google Analytics: Essential in telling you what's happening with your website, including where your visitors are coming from, what they're doing when they get there, the keywords driving traffic to your site etc. Too many features to mention, but an absolute necessity. There are other statistic/analytics software on the internet, however for what you pay (i.e. free!) this is simply the best tool and given Google largely dictates the SEO rules, why would you use anything else? Google Webmaster: Another essential tool in our opinion, particularly with regards to SEO. You can link your Analytics and Webmaster accounts together, however not all of the Webmaster information is displayed in Analytics. Great for seeing keywords, search volumes, avg rankings etc to your site. No SEO mission is complete without this tool in your kitbag. Bing Webmaster: Some will ask 'why bother' when it comes to Bing Webmaster. We say, 'Why not?'. Despite individual opinions, Bing is still a very active search engine and let's face it - if most take a 'why bother' approach to Bing, then there's more search traffic for you right? Those tools are the essential's. Now you're tracking is sorted, you'll want to start promoting your website/blog. Once you get comfortable with those tools and you're ready to begin your SEO endeavours, a few websites/tools that might help you on your way are: How To Do SEO. A Simple Starter Guide (http://plainsimpleseo.com/) Open Site Explorer (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/) Majestic SEO Site Explorer (http://www.majesticseo.com/) In addition to all of the above, it's worth having a read of Yoast's Definitive Guide to Higher Rankings for WordPress sites (https://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/). We're not affiliated with Yoast, but we love the work they do for the WordPress and SEO community. The more support they get, the better their plugins become. Again, we're not affiliated with any of the sites listed above. We just think they're great tools to use and people give up a lot of their time to write and publish them for no fee, and we think they should be supported, even if it's just a shout-out every now and then. I hope this helps you on your endeavours to build a kick-ass site Noitartst. Yes, the whole process is long, daunting and complex, but as you take your time through the process, you'll become more comfortable with it and learn a great deal along the way. Good luck! Andrew