My nice new monetarily-acquired domain is here:http://thevanitymirror.com/ but, unfortunately, my hosting Wordpress.com blog is not, and I would like to figure out how, pray tell, to ameliorate the situation. Posted my first entry, too, but no one can see it; mighty obnoxious drag, that.
You will have to pay WordPress to point your WP.com domain at your owned URL or to transfer it. It's in the Store menu on the WP.com dashboard. If you choose to assign a domain to the blog, you stay hosted on WP.com (with their limitations) for about $15 a year, I think. If you choose to transfer the blog to your own domain, you'll have to pay for hosting but you can run it on self-hosted WP and remove all the limitations (i.e. you can monetize, run whatever plugins and themes you want, etc.). Edit: just checked, it's $18 to use a domain name for your WP.com blog (i.e. point thevanitymirror.com at it).
well i think you can linking your domain into wp hosting, because the have their own policy about domain, different with blogspot. I suggest you to have hosting and build your own wp blog than try to linking your domain into wp hosting
Well, I own the domain, and as Wordpress seems to be working, I guess my qualms are answered. I paid Namecheap $10.87 for one year for my domain, and $13 Wordpress for "domain mapping." Sound about right? Is this self-hosting in my current setup, or will I need to pay $5 more? Can it now be monetized?
If your blog is on WP.com, it's not self-hosted. You will have to operate within their limits, which I believe means no ads, puts limits on themes and plugins, and otherwise generally limits you to "beginner" stuff. In all honesty, you would have been better off spending the $13 for their mapping on hosting, installing WordPress yourself and getting off their platform, as many people suggested on the other thread. You are now tied in to ad-free WP until you buy hosting and point your domain at it yourself (and transfer all your posts) or pay WP to allow you to run ads.
If you are just starting your blog you should really get your own hosting. When you are on wordpress,com you are on their website bond by their rules and investing your work into their domain. About $80 a year you can get your own hosting and dozens of blogs on it and basically do most kinds of advertizing along with traffic stats and private email. Most hosting places will also give you one free domain registration.
You need to get a web hosting plan and install WordPress on it. Then import your WP.com blog over to your new "self-host" WordPress installation. It's well worth it... http://www.easysitestarter.com/move-wordpress-com-blog-self-hosted-wordpress-installation/
Well, I paid $10.87 for my own domain from Namecheap, thevanitymirror.com, and it's running, without Wordpress in the name, so it's self-hosted, ain't it? Clearly, my blog is not not on Wordpress's domain, as there's not a wordpress in it, is there? That, and I've already paid some dough, as stated. How much more will be needed? Oh, and if you'll look here: http://thevanitymirror.com/ you'll see, I wager, the black Wordpress.org background, as opposed to the Wordpress.com
"The Twenty Fourteen Theme. Blog at WordPress,com." You also have the Wordpress,com favicon Your code is also full of tracks leading back to your wordpress,com hosting. The only person, robot or spider that is going to be fooled is you.
Never claimed to be an expert, nor do want to be; all I doing was make a devil's advocate case. So what do I do about this stupid mess, anywho? This has so far been little more than a a waste of time, emotion, and money, and I'm sick of it.
You are not "self-hosted". Your dot com is just mapped to your wordpress.com blog. thevanitymirror.com/wp-login.php redirects to http://thevanitymirrordotcom.wordpress.com/wp-login.php If you want to monetize your blog you will have to pay WordPress more money to allow you to make money from your blog or buy a web hosting plan and host your blog yourself.
You have 2 posts on a free blog site, in the world of web design and marketing that's small.. Most marketing people do that amount of work before they finish the second cup of coffee in the morning. I am not trying to put down your work or anything just giving you some realistic advice. your current blog is not worth getting bad emotions. I think your best bet would be to buy a blog that already has content and see if the seller will help you set it up on some real hosting.
Well, I already have a bought domain, so is it too late to self host for thevanitymirror.com, now? What are the specific steps I should take to self-host, or start over?
You keep asking the same thing and not reading what people tell you. As both micksss and I have said, you need to get some hosting, install WP on it, point your domain at it and transfer your posts. There are thousands of tutorials with the specific steps for each part of the process online, covering every possible hosting provider and nuance of the transfer. If it's really that difficult for you (and it may be, as not everyone has even a small technical bent), pay someone to do it. Seriously, it's not difficult: takes about 20 minutes to do once you've got the hosting.
Hey, It's true that if you're using WordPress.com you're going to have a hard time monetizing your blog. On the other hand, if you're just looking to get started blogging, WordPress.com is not a bad way to go. If you're not an expert in this area, you might want to stick with it and try generating some content, playing around a bit and learning some things and finding out how it works before you take the plunge into a self-hosted WordPress blog. Honestly it might end up being frustrating for you, and you won't have the kind of support that you would with .com. Even if you self-host you're not likely to start making money any time soon, so why don't you just try to enjoy having a blog and maybe learn a few things? If you want to use your domain, it appears to be working, so this doesn't look like the end of the world. On the other hand you can do a lot more with a self-hosted installation of WordPress, and you'll probably learn more doing it that way. It's really not that difficult to set up -- there are those of use who do it 5, 6, 7 times a day. The domain is yours and you can do whatever you want with it, but you'll have to be patient enough to do things like go to a search engine and type in, "how do I point my domain to a hosting account?" If you're the type of person who gets sick of things this quickly, maybe you should think about sticking with something simple like a dot com account for a while, just while you get your feet wet.